NEW ORLEANS – If you couldn't get tickets to see the New Orleans Saints kick off the 2010/2011 NFL season in the Louisiana Superdome, the next best places to be for fans of last year's NFL champs was at the adjacent Champions Square, an "urban tailgating" site. Solomon Group installed 384 400 Chauvet COLORado LED lighting fixtures from Chauvet in the area to meet the rigorous specs for high luminous output and minimal power draw. The gear list included 192 of the fixtures with a 30° lens, 48 with a 15° lens and 144 with a 30° lens.
Champions Square presented by Verizon is a 60,000 square foot public plaza adjacent to the Superdome, the site of the former New Orleans Centre. Designed by local architect Allen Eskew, of Eskew+Dumez+Ripple, the plaza uses a temporary structural system, but will remain an active facility for the next four years as a permanent venue is constructed.
The current structure for Champions Square looks like a city skyline made of scaffolding and truss with projection surfaces, LED video screens, a state-of-the-art sound system, performance spaces and extra-large photographs depicting sports figures from the Superdome's history. This surrounds an open, paved area where food and drink vendors offer local and festival fare, and fans can gather, mingle and enjoy the game.
The virtual skyline features over-sized black and white photographs lit by Chauvet COLORado 1 VW fixtures, 78 in total, placed above each image at the end of five foot arms, which point downward, gallery-style. COLORado 1 fixtures also warm the truss that frames each photograph, changing colors throughout the night. Between each photograph are 10-foot by 10-foot color boxes, 29 in total, featuring four COLORado 1 fixtures behind each box.
"Beautiful, clean blocks of color was the architect's intent," said Gary Solomon, Jr., president of Solomon Group. "Each backlit module, or color box, balances the graphics and photographs throughout while the lights serve as truss warmers and uplighting for the graphics."
The Champions Square installation came about rather quickly, noted Solomon Group partner Jonathan Foucheaux, who called the COLORado 1 fixtures the "workhorse" for the project. "It was a long-term project for the Superdome, but it was fast-tracked when the Saints won the Super Bowl," he said.
The project was bid, awarded and installed in only four months. Solomon Group performed every aspect except erecting the scaffolding. The entire installation is run and managed on site with two rooms of computers, consoles and floor-to-ceiling processing racks for all the sound, video and lights. Seven computers are used to run everything and Foucheaux can manage the sound system through his iPhone, while the lighting designer has a wireless tablet to run lights from anywhere in the square.
"Everything is backlit and everything is pixel mapped," said Foucheaux. "We do pixel mapping of the lights over the structure and screens, placing a video file which correlates pixels in every light out in the square."
All the fixtures, including the video screens, had to be LED, so the COLORado 1, indoor/outdoor wash fixtures fit the bill. Housed in aluminum, they feature a total of 36, one-watt red, green and blue LEDs, meeting the project's specs for output and power draw.
"This entire square only pulls about 300 amps," said Foucheaux. "COLORado offered the brightness and ruggedness we needed. There were four days of heavy rain while we were installing everything and there have been zero problems," he added. "It's the first time we've used these fixtures and everyone has been pleased with the results."
Solomon Group, a relatively new firm run by designers with a long history in theater, theme park design, video broadcasting and live events, was awarded the project in June of 2010. The designers have previously worked on the National WWII Museum, local theater and corporate events, and a future project – the Louisiana State Museum's Living with Hurricanes: Katrina and Beyond exhibition, opens later this month.
For more information, please visit www.chauvetlighting.com .
