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Major New Chinese Venue Opens with English Rigging Systems
China's first western managed concert venue opened on October 12 with an extensive rigging facility supplied by Star Events Group Ltd.
Wukesong Arena was built in west Beijing for the 2008 Olympics specifically to host basketball. Privately financed by developer Bloomage International Investment Group Inc, the venue was managed by AEG and then closed post games for a total refurbishment.
The refurbishment maintains the basketball heritage, with regular appearances by the American NBA teams - basketball having a huge following in China. However, it now works as a major world class concert venue, the first in a planned series of 11 across China, all managed by AEG.
The venue's huge roof, covering some 14,400 sq.m was designed for sports use rather than concert rigging and so the owners went to tender for suitable solutions for rigging.
Bidding against world wide competition, Star Events Group's Active Roof Technology (ART of Rigging) system was jointly selected by Bloomage and AEG. The rigging system had to solve the multiple problems of creating a wide span mother grid (roof nodes at 12m centres) for concert use, keeping the mother grid out of sight lines for basket ball and finding a solution to the 20 ton centre-hung scoreboard that created a huge number of seat kills for concert use.
The mother grid was based on a new version of Star Events' well known VerTech mega-truss that offers loading capacities of up to 10.2 tons on a 12m span. Built from thin wall hi-tensile steel, this truss is considerably lighter than an aluminium equivalent.
All roof nodes were equipped with 4-ton Loadguard hoists, fitted with dual phase encoders, networked load cells, temperature sensors and hour meters.
Control is based around Ibex Programmable Hoist Control and Load Cell Monitor units linked by a PC running Hoist-Net software to Guardian hoist controllers. Hoists and control were all supplied on a ‘plug and play' basis by Lift Turn Move Ltd in the UK.
The Daktronics centre hung scoreboard was totally rebuilt to allow the upper and lower sections to telescope inside each other and to be lifted to the underside of the roof, enabling every seat to have a perfect view of an end on stage position. SEGL designed and built the new framework, dismantled the huge existing roof hoist system and re-fitted all 13 video screens. This involved new mains, fibre optics and cable management systems.
The mother grid has been designed to easily split into two halves, enabling each section to tilt to follow the roof contours, parking it well clear of basketball sight lines.
8 tons of control and hoists plus ‘mission critical' items such as heavy duty shackles were air-freighted from the UK whilst all of the trusses and structural steelwork were built in Shanghai by SEGL's fabrication partner.
The contract was discussed for over a year but to meet the client's timescale SEGL went from contract award to handover in just 10 weeks.
Installation was headed up by Roger Barrett as project director and Jo Xie (General Manager of Star Events Group China) as project manager. Three of Star's UK crew (Pete English, Oz Wickham and Andrew Phillips) worked with their four-man Chinese crew and six crew from the fabricators. Installation of the mother grid and re-build of the scoreboard was achieved in 14 days with a further three days of commissioning and training.
First events in the venue include an NBA game between the Denver Nuggets and the Indiana Pacers, a major concert featuring local artists for China Central TV and then Beyonce.
Back in the UK, Roger Barrett says the venue sets standards the UK could well emulate - extensive covered loading bays, easy access from trucks to venue floor, masses of power (8 x 400A per phase for lighting and a separate transformer isolated 400A per phase for audio), loads of back-stage space and a well thought through audience experience with good sight lines throughout the venue. The venue management team is made up of American, English and Chinese staff bringing extensive levels of experience to such a new venue - plus of course, world class rigging facilities. The end result is a 25.5m x 21m grid with sliding spreaders that can not only support 50 tons of production but lift that off the stage. Every component complies with British Standards BS 7905-1 and BS 7906: Category A as well as DIN 56925. Uniquely this means that no safeties need to be added to the grid once it is at trim. This saves a lot of time during load-ins, significantly decreases the amount of working at height, and gives incoming productions the flexibility to trim the mother grid at any height up to the maximum of 21m clear of the floor.
The venue seats 12,000 with end-on stage, 17,500 in the round and looks set to become a fixture on the ever expanding world tour circuit.
Jessica Guo, speaking for the venue owners, said: "The work Star Events Group is performing will make Wukesong stand out from all the other venues in Beijing."
13th October 2009
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