Audico Systems installed 281 Elation Professional Fuze Pendant LED downlights in Finland’s Tampere Hall, north of Helsinki, the largest concert and congress centre in the Nordic countries.
The impetus for the house lighting upgrade stemmed from EU regulations that will effectively end the use of certain halogen bulbs, coupled with the fact that the venue’s old house lighting system was nearing the end of its lifetime. The project commenced in 2018 with Audico conducting product demos of various house lighting fixtures, including the Fuze Pendant.
“The venue required good quality white light with high colour rendering and also highly saturated colours for effects. The fixtures also had to be very silent,” explained Project Sales Manager at Audico, Tapio Järvinen. “We chose the Fuze Pendant because of the good light quality (CRI of 90) and the good dimming. It also had enough output to cover the venue and because it is fanless it does not make a noise.”
Fixed scenes are set for different kinds of use: orchestra rehearsals, audience arrival, cleaning, etc. Tapio said a power limit for the Fuze Pendants has been set at 80% “but when the system is all on it still only runs at 40% so there is plenty of output in the Fuze Pendant!” The 11,000-lumen fixtures are equipped with 25º lenses and were recessed in already existing positions using a custom mounting piece. The narrower lens was necessary for the long throws, which range from 15 to 18-metres. With colour temperature of the Fuze Pendants adjustable from 2,400 – 8,500K, the house look in the space has been set at 3,000K.
The Fuze Pendant’s full spectrum 230W RGBWL array and adjustable colour temperature allows the Hall to change the feel of the room whenever needed or colour match with anything happening on stage. The lighting is controlled via an architectural control system or an automated lighting console and runs across four universes of DMX control.
One of the biggest challenges that the Audico team had to deal with was time constraints. The majority of the installation took place over a three-week period last summer where over 370 existing halogen lights were removed and replaced with 281 Fuze Pendants along with 100 other LED downlights. Five dimmer cabinets were also removed while five switchboards were installed and all data cabling completed.
Tampere Hall is a carbon neutral building and has operated as a green value pioneer in Finland for years, emphasising environmental and social responsibility in its operations and procurement. With environmental responsibility one of its guiding values, the fact that the new house lighting was LED-based was extremely important to them. “The savings comes from more precise control, the ability to control each light individually,” Tapio said. “For example, now they can turn on only a few lights if needed or only turn on lights in a certain area, like over the stage. Because they have more precise control, they have no reason to keep lights on all the time. The lighting renovation was intended to consider not only energy efficiency but all users of the Hall from visiting lighting designers to the daily cleaning staff.”
Simply put, it is one of the most spectacular house lighting installations in the world. A picture is worth a thousand words. Just look at the result! Benefits over the old system include: high quality light, high colour rendering, colour temperature adjustable, dimmable, unlimited colours, pure white light, noiseless, less maintenance, fewer expendables (ie. bulbs), less heat…in short, more dynamic!
