Lisbon, Portugal recently got a glossy, high-profile club venue when owner John Blummenfeld committed one million euros to convert a former restaurant/discotheque that features décor and furnishing by Philippe Starck. The club also boasts an integrated lighting, video, and sound system installed by the company Audium.
. Photo: Courtesy of Sara Griggs Media
The club accommodates 1,000 people on two levels, a ground floor, which is open to the general public and an upper-level mezzanine, which is open to VIPS, special guests and privates parties. With House music as the preferred style, the club is open Thursdays through Saturdays, with peak hours being 1-4am. The schedule will soon also be open Wednesdays, midnight-6am.
According to a club spokesperson, “O2 has all the attributes to be come a top club, thanks to a combination of the space; Philippe Starck’s décor; the music; high quality sound, light, and video equipment; top international DJs; the promotion, and, most importantly, the clients.”
The stage and dance floor are both dominated by Coemar lighting units. Audium avoided using conventional truss, instead using custom trussing to conform with the size and shape of the room. There are 13 Coemar ProSpot 575 LX units arrayed in a kind of “H” shape, which allows them to be used for both concerts and as dance-floor lighting. “Knowing the client, taking his needs into consideration, we believed that the Coemar ProSpot 575 LX offered the best quality/price ratio,” says Audium’s Raquel Fevereiro
The ProSpot 575 LX is a compact, powerful, lightweight unit. Housing a 575W MSD/MSR2 lamp, its features include two gobo wheels—the first has six interchangeable and indexable rotating gobo wheels, plus open and the second has six fixed interchangeable gobos. Beam scanning offers 385-degree pan and 260-degree tilt. The unit also contains seven discrete dichroic colors on a color wheel, plus open. high-speed rotating prism, remote focusing, 8/16-bit resolution, increased range of gobo rotation speeds and a new “gobo shake” effect.
Audium also specified a LeapFrog console from Zero 88 to run the concert/show lighting while a Compulite Rave console, installed on the upper floor, handles the dance floor lighting. The two units can operate either independently or simultaneously. (Zero 88 products are available in the US through ACT Lighting).
The appeal of the new club is in its uniqueness. Asked how it will fit into the Lisbon scene, a club spokesperson says that it doesn’t, “and that is its triumph. O2 is step ahead in Lisbon’s panorama of nightlife. It immediately imposed itself as a reference and in just two months has become one of the most popular clubs of the city.”