Located on the southern bank of the Brisbane River and built on lands that were once the traditional home of the Jagera and Turrbal people, the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) is the premier arts centre in Queensland, Australia.

The 850-seat Playhouse Theatre, used mainly for theatre and dance productions, opened in 1998. Recently, a decision was made to replace the theatre's dimmers, as the existing ones were showing signs of age. Phil Viney from Design Stage was engaged to prepare a specification that would directly replace new for old dimmers in the theatre.

Due to space limitations and the existing dimmers’ footprint, any replacement dimmers also needed to be small-footprint units that could be distributed around various locations in the venue easily. The only available alternative were rack-mounted dimmers however, such a solution would occupy valuable floor space, be more expensive and difficult to use with the large installed patch system.

LSC responded to this challenge by repackaging its existing popular TEKO TruPower dimmer technology into a clamshell-style metalwork design that could be wall-mounted in a 250mm x 500mm space.

The newly packaged dimmer - named the iTEKO - addressed all of the venue’s requirements including minimal disruption during installation, remote reporting of dimmer status including tripped breakers, RCD protection on every channel, TruPower technology to allow any selected channel to be either dimming or direct power, RDM and extended mains filtering.

As QPAC held concerns about any manufacturer’s dimmers’ ability to cope with mains power disturbances, the successful tenderer was required to install a quantity of their proposed dimmers in the venue for a trial period. To meet this requirement LSC had to design (the new iTEKO required completely new metalwork), produce and supply a short run of dimmers in just over six weeks from winning the tender. The dimmers were supplied and installed on time and the trial was completed successfully.

QPAC’s decision to select the iTEKO was also influenced by price, availability, exceptional features and LSC’s proven track record of installations in other major performing arts centres in Australia and overseas as well as EKO installations in almost every TV station in Australia.

Installation of the 93 dimmer units, providing 966 channels of control, was spread over a few months to ensure that the process didn’t interfere with the venue’s busy performance schedule. All works were completed in March 2015.