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London's Newest Arts Venue Opens to the Public
Kings Place, a new arts venue designed by Dixon Jones, housing London's first concert hall since 1982, will open to the public with a five-day Festival on Wednesday 1 - Sunday 5 October 2008.
The innovative development brings together major arts spaces with office accommodation and waterside bars and restaurants. The building is only 150m from King's Cross and the new Channel Tunnel Rail Link and is part of one of the largest urban regeneration projects in Europe.
The development includes a 420-seat auditorium, a 200-seat flexible space for concerts and conferences, practice rooms, teaching rooms and rehearsal rooms. It will provide the headquarters for the London Sinfonietta and the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment.
Venue consultant Alex Wardle of Arup was responsible for specifying the lighting systems for the venue. There are four ETC Congo control consoles, two full size and two Congo juniors, and around 30 Source Four luminaries, namely 140 ways of Matrix SineWave, Thyristor and relays. Responsible for the complete installation of the lighting, sound and stage engineering systems, were Northern Light of Edinburgh.
Alex Wardle said: "We wanted a desk with which we could easily grab live control, and set up auto groups. One of my bugbears as a lighting designer is not being able to turn off the main house lights from the control desk. So we set the system so that you can control the house and architectural lights in both the room itself and the outer lobby areas from the Unison system, the Congo desks or a touring console."
Spaces for the visual arts include two art galleries, Kings Place Gallery and Pangolin London, which is one of the UK's largest sculpture spaces. Arup has worked with architects Dixon Jones, providing specialist acoustic consultancy and engineering services. Green & Fortune will provide restaurants and bars as well as waterside spaces for conferences and private events.
The five-day opening celebrations will begin each morning at 9am with 100 metronomes striking time to György Ligeti's Poème Symphonique. There will be 100 concerts throughout the building with special performances in the new 420-seat concert hall. Exhibitions by Nicolaus Widerberg, Albert Irvin and Peter Randall-Page will be open to the public in Pangolin London and Kings Place Gallery. The waterside bars and cafes will offer a special menu from 9am until 11pm throughout the Festival and there will be several family events each day.
After the opening festival Kings Place moves straight into its weekly series of programmes curated by a wide range of different musicians starting with Rock Music Rock Art from the London Sinfonietta.
The developers, Parabola Land, have established the Kings Place Music Foundation (KPMF) to manage and operate the music space and to carry out an ambitious outreach programme. Through its close relationships with local residents, schools and organisations, the programme will provide accessible music and arts to the local community. Outreach at Kings Place will be run by KPMF in association with the London Sinfonietta, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Royal Academy of Music, the King's Place Sculpture Residency and Pangolin London.
Pictures courtesy Richard Bryant/arcaid.co.uk 2008.
29th September 2008
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