The Project
Located within London’s iconic Southbank Centre, the Royal Festival Hall first opened in 1951 and is a Grade I listed building. Since its inception, tungsten lighting has illuminated the hall both on stage and around the auditorium. With the availability of tungsten fixtures now coming to an end, couple with a strong desire to convert and draw on the benefits of newer technology, the venue decided to upgrade all of its existing fixtures to LED. As part of this upgrade, the most important factor was maintaining the exact same look and heritage of the building in line with its Grade I listing.
The Brief
3LR was part of a wider team, which included Jonathan Porter Goff (consultant) and d&b Solutions (integrator). Their three main challenges were to ensure the fixtures in all areas had the exact same appearance as those that went before, maintain the existing ambience and colour temperature of the space, as well as use as much of the existing infrastructure as possible. 3LR drew on products from ETC’s ArcSystem and ArcLamp ranges, with custom reflectors and metal work from Eulum Design. Customer diffuser were placed on the front of the fixtures, giving them the appearance of the original fittings. The use of ArcLamps within the downlighters inside the balcony space meant 3LR could use the existing wiring with the concrete and custom brackets and reflectors to give a precise replacement effect.
The overall ArcSystem elements included: Arc Pro 1 Cell, Navis 100 Chroma, Navis 50 Fade-to-warm and ArcLamp. 3LR also used a variety of drivers across the Arc System and F-Drive families to power the system. The house lighting system also accommodated emergency lighting throughout the space, running through the central battery unit.
The Delivery
The first phase of the project took place during a maintenance period in the summer of 2024 with a team of 12, whilst the second took place during the summer of 2025 with a team of 20. This included a month of overnight work, installing a new 250 Amp mains supply for the new systems, and fitting the first of ETC’s new Foundry racks replacing obsolete Matrix racks, for power control. The new fittings have made an immediate impact for those working within the space – and most importantly, haven’t been noticed by any visiting audience member.
Talk to the team today to find out more
