The Kulturpalast Dresden shines in a new light
About the project
After four years of construction the time has come today: The listed Kulturpalast with a concert hall for 1,800 seats opens its doors. The new concert hall, the home of the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra, forms the heart of the building erected in 1969.
Until its closure, it remained one of Dresden's most important venues. And that despite the nearby Semper Opera. Now the concert hall has been modernised and renovated. The lighting lets the concert hall shine in a new light and highlights the special architecture. The good cooperation between the Traunreuter lighting planning office CONCEPTLICHT and the lighting control expert Seebacher from Bad Tölz provides the technology in the background and leaves the brilliant spotlight on the musicians.
Quick Facts:
- Construction costs: 89.3 million €
- Start of construction: 2013
- Opening: 28.04.2017
- Palace of Culture Dresden
The music is in the foreground
The Kulturpalast in Dresden is the most important cultural project of the year. Its lighting design was developed around the concert hall, taking into account monument conservation concerns. From the very beginning the intention was to give the room a natural expression through the light. Because not the luminaires should be set in scene, they should give much more an inconspicuous and simple atmosphere to the room.
"Why do you think you go to a concert? Probably not for the instruments, but for the music."
Light planner Helmut Angerer
The lights are like the instruments of the musicians and should not push themselves into the foreground. The focus is on the music and its sound experience. If this is not followed, the atmosphere suffers in a room with a high design standard. For this reason, a visual calm was strived for in the concept alongside all functional constraints. For the concert hall, the lighting planning office developed special luminaires to meet these requirements. The typical light cones of the downlights had to be avoided, as these create an enormous restlessness.
All components of the hall lighting are LED technology, whereby only light sources with colour rendering level 1A with warm light colour were used. Only for the presentation of the organ a white light colour was chosen and the wall illumination is done with fluorescent lamps. All components were divided into different dimming circuits in order to be able to set different lighting scenes. The control gears of the downlights were moved to the top floor for easy maintenance. The choice of LED dimmers was based on colour accuracy, flicker-free operation and uniform dimmability of up to 0%. Therefore, dimmers from Seebacher were used, which also contain safety functions for the BUS failure and the operation of the safety lighting. A challenge was not to create any cones of light from the downlights on the white wall sections stepped towards the ceiling, which would then have a negative effect on the entire atmosphere as on the presentation plate. The same applies to the height-adjustable sound sails, which were not allowed to be immersed in the light cones of the downlights.
The following ISYGLT modules were used:
- MA-IP-2: Master Module
- I/O-08B-230V-10A: Switching Actuators
- I/O-08B-230V-10A: Switching Actuators
- DMX-512-16B: DMX Interface Module
- LED-02E-DMX-1000: 2-channel LED Dimmer (current-controlled)
- LED-03EC-DMX-350: 3-channel LED Dimmer (current-controlled)
- LED-03EC-DMX-700: 3-channel LED Dimmer (current-controlled)
- Touch-PC-CB: Touch PC 19"
- Mini-PC: IPMS Visualisation Server
Project participants:
Builder: Subsidiary company of state capital Dresden
Architects: gmp Generalplanungs-
gesellschaft mbH
Light planning: CONCEPTLICHT GmbH
Lighting control: Seebacher GmbH
Theatre planner: daberto + kollegen planungsgesellschaft mbh
Acoustics: Peutz Consult GmbH