The facts
Client: Test Valley Borough
Council
Location: Andover,
Hampshire
Services: Building Services
Engineering
Sector: Sport & Leisure
Contract Type PPC2000
Project Value: £1.5m
Start/Completion: 2005 - 2006
The project
Capita Symonds was awarded the
building services design element of this challenging project on
PPC2000 contract, which saw the refurbishment and modernization of
the former 1970’s college theatre block.
The brief was to create a modern
iconic cultural centre for the district with the ‘WOW’
factor, providing an exciting place in which to meet, be
entertained, to learn and to conduct business and designed to offer
flexible spaces to a wide spectrum of audiences.
Auditorium
The challenges of this part of the project were to replace the
existing lighting and provide high quality illumination whilst
achieving energy efficiency and overcoming long term maintenance
and access difficulties.
Capita Symonds search for an
affordable innovative approach suggested adaptation of current
street lighting solutions using Light Emitting Diodes (LED) sources
and recognised the possibility of developing this technology as an
appropriate solution.
This innovative approach is not known
to have been previously applied to theatre auditoriums. Using LED’s
provided good colour rendering, energy efficient running costs and
a lamp life that would possibly exceed the life of the building
thereby requiring little or no maintenance.
The guaranteed lamp life of over 20
years based on a 10 hour 365 day burn time was an excellent benefit
and eliminated the CDM requirements for future high level
maintenance and access.
The final solution provided high
quality colour rendition to the new seating and auditorium
decorations and achieved excellent illumination levels equivalent
to 250/300 lux. With a total energy consumption of 504 watts over
an area of approx. 180sqm. Giving an energy performance indicator
of 2.8 watts per square metre.
The ambient lighting comprised 6 x 12 watt, 6 x 24 watt & 6 x
48 Watt Warm White, Dimmable, LED sources with 6 x colour changing
LED wall lights to provide visual stimulation.
Arena
The challenges of this part of the project were to achieve
performance enhancing illumination to the multi function space and
also achieving a 'WOW 'factor on entering the building, and thereby
creating excitement and interest in the new venue to attract
the public and performers and eliminate the previous poor image of
the building. Available funding was extremely limited and had to be
spent wisely.
The venue had to incorporate flexibility to enhance the
potential wide cultural use.
The use of lighting was considered crucial as this would enable
colour & mood changes to be achieved quickly &
effectively.
The solution incorporated a mixture of low energy compact
florescent luminaries with colour changing LED and a interactive
light wall responding to people’s movement.
The lighting design was integrated with the building acoustic
solution and developed to support the varied operational usage.