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Inventive LED and TMC Bring St Andrew’s into the 21st Century
When the progressive St. Andrew’s Church in Chorleywood wanted to upgrade its lighting as part of a major refurbishment programme, they had not banked on the possibilities that could be achieved — both at the altar and within the congregational environment, by mixing customised LEDs with intelligent heads and generic lighting.
The Anglican Church has come a long way since being set up as offshoot of the nearby Christ Church on Chorleywood Common (who commissioned it to be built in the mid-60’s).
St. Andrew’s has a seating capacity of 250 in the main Church (and a further 150 in the annex room, separated by partitions. When they were ready to replace their low-level, hanging pendant and basket lighting (a problem exacerbated by the dark varnished cladding behind) they consulted lighting expert Greg Szabo, with whom they became connected through their affiliation with the New Wine Festivals at the Bath & West Showground (where Greg is production manager).
Jim Sutton, church manager and member of the clergy — who is also a trustee of New Wine — recalls that he was “desperate to find a solution” when Szabo introduced him to Ian Kirby at Lighting Effects Distribution. The latter, in turn, brought in design integration company TMC Ltd and various options were considered.
TMC’s project manager, Martin Tarpy, says that after carrying out a site survey, they were confronted with a number of options. “We could simply have uplit it from the pelmet line, as we had done recently at the Birmingham Christian Centre, but felt the result may have looked disjointed due to the cross beams. Budget restrictions precluded using three circuits of Solar L80 LED battens so instead we opted for two, contriving a bespoke solution to wash evenly across the vaulted ceiling, using different angles to create short-and long-throw effects,” he explained.
Having searched the internet for LED manufactuers offering linear suspended uplighters, Ian Kirby himself designed a bespoke LED luminaire with adjustable beam angles to achieve the maximum spread of light.
Martin Tarpy was generous in his praise. “Standard fittings — such as the discharge colour changers originally considered — wouldn’t have achieved sufficient coverage,” concedes Martin. “There was a lot of experimentation but this solution creates maximum light dispersion and has given the Church a very good result for its money.”
However, there is far more innovation to this project than the heatsink metal blocks manufactured by Solar.
L.E.D. dipped into their vast catalogue to produce a combination of Coemar iSpot moving heads and generic studio and profile PARs, for mounting to the lighting bars, and TMC installed a number of dim and non-dim circuits to accommodate.
The focal point is the altar and holy cross. The latter is now haloed in adjustable white light on a dimmer circuit (offered by a Coemar LineaLED and its dedicated RegoLED 24 driver), while a pair each of Solar L1200 and L600 RGB linear strips form a colour-changing wash on the curtains behind, activated by their own drivers.
Up in the lighting and video gallery two desks have been installed — while the OXO Bora 512-channel desk handles all the intelligent lighting, the generics are run off an OXO Mistral 48-channel DMX control surface.
“TMC have done a fantastic job,” enthuses Jim Sutton, “and the coloured reflective light against the white plasterboard ceiling is magnificent across such a big area. We simply couldn’t have afforded the ongoing power and maintenance costs to light the whole thing any other way, and even with the house lights up or the two projection screens on, it creates a wonderful environment.
“We are also delighted with the halo effect behind the cross, and thanks to the Coemar intelligent lighting offered by L.E.D., we have been able to have our own gobos customised — for instance when we hosted a golden wedding anniversary recently. We see that becoming an increasing feature in the multipurpose activities of the Church, which can easily convert to a dining room.”
At the same time the production lighting has created a much more dynamic environment for St. Andrew’s resident bands to play through during the conventional Sunday services.
19th September 2005
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