The Project
Located on London’s Southbank, the National Theatre is one of the most iconic theatrical venues in the entire world and has three auditoriums: Olivier, Lyttleton and Dorfman. As part of the Dorfman Theatre’s Infrastructure Rewire Project, the venue needed a complete replacement of its existing House Lighting System. As a specialist auditorium lighting consultant, 3LR Lighting was approached to provide a lighting design that covered auditorium, emergency and workers lighting, as well as acquire a range of brand-new ETC fixtures for the space.
The Brief
3LR had to formulate a new lighting design for the Dorfman which would allow perfectly dimmable lighting across all areas of the auditorium, as well as the ability for audience members to read their programme easily in every seat. The design had to encompass every variation of the auditorium, from end-on-stage, to thrust stage and even in-the-round. There was also an emphasis to draw on ETC products – which the theatre had already invested in and for whom 3LR is a manufacturer representative. 3LR also had to cover all aspects and light levels for Emergency Lighting in the auditorium and scene dock areas.
The Delivery
For this project, 3LR had only four months of design work and then seven months to strip out the theatre and replace with the new infrastructure. 3LR called upon its in-house lighting designer Karoliina Helin to devise a lighting design for the space; one which allowed for complete coverage. The design was developed using the brand-new Arc System Navis 50 FTW fittings with F-Drive RX as the centralised drive unit back in the dimmer room; with 3LR accessing all 387 of the Navis fittings 12 months before they were publicly launched. Following the design work by 3LR, this was brought to life by integrators Push The Button (PTB) led by Managing Director Nick Ewins and Design Manager, Andy Philips. PTB carried out the detailed design and installed all of the luminaires and drivers before handing over to the National Theatre’s Lighting Control Team.
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