Barbican Chose Latest Dimming Technology

White Light supply IES Dimming System to the Barbican Concert Hall

In one of the first installations of its type in the UK, White Light are supplying a system of the latest dimmer technology from IES in Holland to the Barbican Concert Hall in London.

White Light have long prided themselves on their freedom from ties to any one manufacturer and the ability this gives them to supply the best product to meet a customer’s needs. In this case, the IES dimmers were the only product capable of matching the very tight specification drawn up by Steve Ramsden, the Barbican’s Technical Manager - in particular, his demand for near-silent operation.

The resulting project has involved close collaboration between White Light’s Bryan Raven, Teatro’s Andy Collier, who represents IES in the UK, Jan de Jonge from IES, Charlie Irvine from CLI Contracts, appointed by WL to carry out the electrical installation, and Antony Bridges from The Service Company. As part of the installation, Bridges was responsible for designing and building a custom interface between the Barbican Hall’s house lighting system the new dimmers. And as the White Light Group’s specialist service and support organisation, The Service Company are providing first-line support for the installation follwing its commissioning by IES’s own engineers.

As is often the case in busy entertainment venues, the installation had to be completed on a very tight time scale: work on stripping out the existing dimmers started after the performance on August 1st, and the new installation had to be completed for a show on September 5th. Fortunately the close co-operation of White Light, CLI Contracts and The Service Company - honed on other recent projects including the installation of 180 ways of LD90 dimming at the Bloomsbury Theatre and the ongoing refurbishment of the Chicken Shed Theatre in Southgate - allowed work to proceed at the required pace.


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