Light Design Ltd was approached by the Managing Director, Jason Hector, of a new independent chain of nightclub venues named Remix Leisure and was asked to propose a design and quotation for their Hitchin site to provide a night club lighting installation to launch the Remix brand in the UK. Terry Lewsey, Managing Director of Light Design attended site to assess the venue and to conduct detailed site visits on both Hitchin and Ashford for the new leisure company providing detailed quotes that won Light Design the contracts!
The Hitchin site visit was particularly complex due to its major Trilite trussing design that was to be the feature for the nightclub and needed to be addressed before any further design on the lighting system could take place. Several site meetings followed with trussing expert and old friend, Glen Brown from Milos Structural Systems, surveying the delicate and fragile roof area before getting a full structural survey from local planning and building control officers. This was to be the start of many problems that the Light Design team would encounter on this 50 year old former Hitchin ballroom.

This Hitchin landmark night club has operated as a club in many guises over the last five decades and has seen many 60s rock‘n’roll and pop legends, such as The Who, Motley Crew, The Rolling Stones and Tina Turner play at the venue. With this in mind new owners, Jason Hector and Mary Ward approached the project with a plan and design to bring the nightclub up to date catering for their new customers and promoters like Fierce Angel and other high profile house promoters. The design incorporating both trussing, lighting and AV had to be perfect as the venue would also showcase music and entertainment in their various forms like live bands, dance DJs, tribute bands, commercial student nights and comedy acts so the technology and the equipment had to be up to the job.

Light Design decided to use lighting fixtures from the Martin Professional range due to their excellent reliability and track record. As the industry standard manufacturer when it comes to lighting equipment, Terry Lewsey, Project Manager for Light Design, selected a full complement of fixtures from the Martin range. From the Martin Mac 250 Krypton, Mac 250 Wash, Mac 600 Wash, MX10 Scanners up to the Roboscan 918 pro. These fixtures make up the main night club lighting rig and are hung from custom trilite trussing from Milos Structural Systems using their Lite Truss M254 system in both rooms with a staggering 150 linear metres of trussing used across both rooms. The truss was erected by veteran Light Design riggers Cameroon Jenner and Richard Matthews who both worked on the Nightingale club project earlier on in the year. Cameroon and Richard, with the help of James from Lifting Tackle Hire, suspended both large trussing structures in the night club in 2 days; a feat that is impressive when taking into account the technical challenges of the fragile roof and complex truss design.

The entire night club installation took just 10 days from start to finish. Light Design had a team working round the clock on 18 hour shifts to get this mammoth lighting and trussing installation project complete. Experienced Technical Director, Michael Lewsey, worked alongside Thuang Tan Senior, Project Technician, to install the main entertainment lighting system. Working at heights of over 6 metres to install some of the fixtures on the trussing was certainly a challenge as everything took time to raise onto the scaffold platform before being hung. As well as the moving head and effect lighting fixtures, the team worked on the installation of over 50 Instyle led custom Truss Colourspots, powered by a 15 x 36 way LED driver pack and DMX controllable via Martin Light Jockey to create many effects as part of the light show. Michael and Thuang also installed the bar with features like full length, stylish colour-changing LED bar top which house a warm light creating a myriad of colours through the perspex frosted bar tops. The bar is fitted with a total of 11 Instyle 1200mm Inh-36s, powered by four 36 way LED driver packs and driven by an Instyle LED controller.

Light Design are very please with this night club installation project, yet another example of superb trilite trussing design, a beautiful fusion of benchmark industry standard lighting, breathtaking led design, installed and programmed to perfection. Now Remix Leisure, under the control of Jason Hector as Managing Director, can look forward to a bright future with his first impressive, large scale night club venue finished. We wish him all the best!
Light Design …… dream, desire, design!