Unusual thinks outside the box at Lightroom

16th May 2023

Three floors down into the basement of the Meta Building in London’s Kings Cross is a large blacked out cube measuring 14m². Lightroom is the brainchild of 59 Productions in collaboration with Haworth Tompkins, with the rigging supplied by Unusual.

Mike Goodwin, capital projects lead at Unusual said: “This is a really innovative space which uses revolutionary technology to allow creative minds to produce something completely unique. The venue is essentially a box which has been acoustically sealed off from the rest of the building above. All the spaces above Lightroom sit on 5 massive bow shaped girders. These in turn rest on large pillars and while there is a connection between the two, it is almost floating.”

As a result of this inventive engineering, virtually no sound permeates into the office spaces above. However this also meant the space required a specially developed truss system that would wrap around the girders, from which the lighting and sound systems could be hung. 

Mike continued: “We installed four wraparound truss rigs – all suspended from the concrete floor above. The engineering is complex and we spent the best part of a year working on the design before principal contractors BORRAS, supported by structural engineers MNE installed some Unusual-designed ceiling brackets. Once these were in place, our rigging team got to work.”

A major challenge before the installation of the wrap around truss rigs could take place, was to get the kit down into the space. Mike continued; “The only way to get everything in was via loading dock and down a 9m drop into the space. That required installing a large travelling beam rig in the lift-well, with two chain hoists on a trolley beam.”

Unusual was also contracted to build a series of large frames to accommodate the newly rolled out HOLLOPLOT speaker system. HOLLOPLOT is a multi-direcitonal sound system that is capable of fairly high pinpoint accuracy sound throwing. This means that a visitor to Lightroom will hear one particular sound standing in one area of the space, but something completely different in another area. “It really is quite something and ensures that everyone’s visitor experience is unique.”

Lightroom is currently showing David Hockney’s “Bigger & Closer (not smaller and further away) exhibition. This doesn’t use HOLLOPLOT because the audio is simple monologue. However when this closes on October 1, it will transition to a fully immersive visual experience that will make full use of the HOLLOPLOT system.

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