Projected Image Digital has supplied, installed and commissioned 60 Element Labs Versa™TUBE LED fixtures in a basement bar lighting scheme at the Hard Rock Café in Barcelona.

This follows on from PID’s work with Paula Reason of Cadmium Design and Steve Inwood, Hard Rock International’s director of European development at the Hard Rock Café in London. Here they supplied a customized VersaTILE installation for the back wall of the basement bar.

PID’s David March comments, “We were delighted to working with Paula, Steve, and the Hard Rock Team again. They are always up for pushing technology to new and interesting boundaries”.

The award winning Barcelona site is the busiest HRC venue in Europe, situated right on the buzzing aorta of Plaça de Catalunya. Such was the success of the VersaTILE installation in London, that it was decided a similar feature was a "must have" for Barcelona.

The Barcelona VersaTUBES are designed as a long flat line of tubes stretching the entire length of the bar. A mirrored wall at one end creates an infinity effect.

The Tubes are fixed in place by a special panel, designed by PID and fabricated by the shopfitters, Davies, also based in London. This was attached to the wall and the Tubes are then slotted into it, leaving an extremely stylish stainless steel finish between each tube, and quick and easy access and removal if needed.

The tubes are controlled by an Element Labs C1 controller, specified by PID as a simple to use and operate solution for general fixed installations. It has a Compact Flash card memory and can store up to 256 memories. PID also made a bespoke eight button push-button controller for HRC Barcelona, which selects 8 different sequences of content.

Reason and PID put their heads together to create eight clips of special video content from scratch to play through the TUBES, utilizing material from PID’s digital content catalogue which was treated and re-rendered to suit the application.

All the on site installation and commissioning was undertaken by PID’s Rob Smith.

Innovative use of light in built environments is a trademark element of Reason’s work. She’s fully aware of the mood changing properties and energy creating potential of lighting as well as the benefits of imaginative aesthetics and has been tastefully integrating light into her design work for some time.

The live music-themed Hard Rock venues have the added resonance of an obviously synergy between conjuring up the desired atmosphere and the importance of stage lighting in live performance. All this makes light an ideal decorative and practical medium in the designer’s toolkit.