Metropolis AV has designed a colorful new exterior architectural lighting installation, including some customized LED fixtures, at the new Sportsman Casino in central London.

The world-class gaming facility wanted something that would distinguish it from the surrounding buildings and were looking for color and movement to make their presence known on their quiet side street.

"At face value this is a relatively straightforward project, but there were two challenges we had to overcome–a very tight budget for the amount of lighting required and the client’s specific request for ‘movement of color’," says Andy Shelton, who, along with fellow Metropolis designer Simon Harris, developed the lighting scheme. "We ruled out moving heads very quickly on the basis that, although the units were relatively inexpensive, the weatherproof domes were going to cost far too much. Instead, we came up with the idea of mounting our TC12 spotlight fittings on off-the-shelf pan & tilt units and manufacturing a DMX controller to drive the motors. This innovative solution fitted the requirements perfectly."

Shelton and Harris asked their manufacturing division, Met 3, to make some special moving versions of its TC12 LED spotlight, complete with 6º lenses. These are mounted within existing downlight fittings and fixed onto the pan/tilt motors that are DMX controlled via a custom driver. There are four of these new units flanking the door of the club, two per side. The fixtures provide a gentle 100º sweep of movement. In addition to the four moving downlights, there are 12 static RGB spotlights attached to the side of the building.

The exterior walls–running along two different streets–are washed with 25.2m of Metropolis TC linear LED strip fittings comprised of 780 1W LEDs, which are attached to the underside of a small ledge between the ground floor and the first floor. These strips emit what would amount to 10kW of tungsten lighting. Measuring various lengths, they include 150mm unlensed strips over the windows and several 75mm pitch lensed fittings.

Once installed, the lighting was programmed on a LightProcessor QCommander console by Maria Jenkins and then stored on a QCommander Replay unit. A small keypad behind the reception desk gives Sportsman Casino access to eight different scenes and sequences.