Lighting Today April-June 2009

The New Year Show at the Palace of the Parliament, Bucharest, Romania

LOBO's new Sparks laser technology was probably the most spectacular medium used so far, for the 30-minute New Year Show that took place in front of the Palace of the Parliament in Bucharest, Romania.

On a green hill right in the heart of Bucharest sits the Palace of the Parliament. with an overall surface of 65,000 m², rises up 85 metres towards the sky and invisibly reaches another 92 metres into the ground. It is the fantasy of Ceauleseu's omnipotence, turned into stone. ln fact, this monument holds some impressive Guinness Book of World records: the Palace is the World's largest civilian administrative building (Overall largest being the Pentagon), most expensive administrative building, and the heaviest building.

Performing an open-air event – like the 30-minute New Year show – at the Palace of the Parliament is not only significant for the whole country, but is also a tremendous technical challenge. No matter what is done around the neoclassical construction, the space would eventually look small. Nevertheless, German lighting designer Jerry Appelt, who is experienced in staging large buildings such as Berlin's new main station, took the challenge to make the palace the centrepiece of his New Year show

Based on the experienced local crew of 360Revolution and Stage Expert, Appelt engaged professional personnel who were experienced in the areas of equipment, operating and design from Germany, Iike Fireworks Designer Hans Mücke, or Lutz Kleine-Herzbruch, who was responsible for Laser Choreography and Fog.

In addition to a whole armada of Space Cannons and moving lights, the laser effeets projectors of LOBO's new Sparks product line were chosen for the show. Sparks is a modular system based on compact, air-cooled and high-performance laser modules, which are available in different colours and power classes. Thanks to the practical 'building block' principle and a sophisticated compact housing, the monochrome and multi-coloured laser system can be tailored to any given applications quickly and easily Compared to other established solutions, Sparks not only provides high output power, but also concentrates its power on an extraordinarily thin beam at even longer distances. This is thanks to LOBO's Post-Collimation System (PCS). This highpowered density results in very high Effective Brightness Values (ELB), which makes Sparks just the ideal solution for openair applications or building projections, such as the Palace of the Parliament.

Approximately 100 metres above the stage, a Sparks system projected the New Year Countdown onto the façade of the 275-wlde Palace and created mirror effects during the subsequent show, while five additional projectors were Installed to create atmospheric beam effects right In front of the spectators.

Thanks to the low dlvergence and an output power of 17 Watts per Sparks system, the laser effects were very outstanding Insplte of the extremely bright background that was Iit up by fireworks and more than 60 Space Cannons.