Espace Grand Paris

The Espace Martin Luther King Grand Paris (Espace Grand Paris) in Créteil, south-east of Paris, is a magnificent €22M building that boasts a main 1,800 attendee capacity auditorium, meeting rooms, a sports hall, a creche, a café and a beautiful rooftop restaurant with panoramic views. The Espace Grand Paris is designed as a socio-cultural hub that aims to serve the community in both a secular and spiritual capacity. The building is equipped with d&b sound systems throughout with the main auditorium featuring a state-of-the-art A-Series system, d&b’s augmented array loudspeaker series, and complete with Soundscape processing for a truly immersive experience.

A key partner in bringing MLK-GP’s vision to life was their long-term technical service provider, S2Sound based in Villejust south of Paris. S2Sound is a full service production company specialising in live events. S2Sound’s Samuel Dugard defined the brief for the new spaces, including AV for the main auditorium.

Dugard specified thirteen clusters of two or three ALi90s with each flown from the roof and are all but invisible unless one chooses to look up at the ceiling. Low end reinforcement is provided by a pair of J-SUBS beneath the stage in a cardioid configuration. A row of eight Vi-SUBS flown above the stage combat any potential hot spots or comb filtering in the ultra-low frequencies to ensure smooth, even coverage throughout. Twelve E8s incorporated into the stage lip provide coverage for the first row, while seventeen Yi10Ps are distributed around the room below the 360-degree screen for surround sound. The cherry on the cake is the DS100 Soundscape processor which enables the use of d&b’s immersive sound software modules En-Scene and En-Space.

“By taking a different approach with a combination of Soundscape and A-Series, the sweet spot is everywhere – you can localise the source from wherever you are in the room, making what you see totally coherent with what you hear. We also have a tracking system in place so that the sound actually moves with the musicians or the speaker. Combined with the 360-degree video wall, it makes for an amazing, fully immersive experience.”

As much effort in the room as on stage, to reinforce immersive impression (more than a hundred of Robe moving heads)

100m² led video walls behind stage to keep video/source localisation coherent, 100m screen 360° acoustic white perforated fabric (22x video beamer 8000lm EPSON)

Flexible mother grill with 20 Tons load capacity

Real time tagless tracking system (NaoStage)

This project is a great example of true collaboration between the different disciplines involved (lights, audio, video, architects). By taking the different needs and requirements into consideration exceptional results were achieved.