In 2008 the Catholic Education Office (CEO) commissioned Glanville Architects to design a vocational training college in Burwood. The first stage of the project was the construction of a performing arts and hospitality training centre including a training theatre, commercial recording studio, green screen room, AV edit suite and multiple rehearsal rooms. Auditoria was engaged in October 2008 by the CEO to design all audiovisual, theatre and acoustical elements of the building. The installation was carried out by Rutledge Engineering.
After nearly two and a half years the project was commissioned in March 2011 and has now been handed over to the teaching staff and facility management.
The training theatre consists of a tension wire grid system with fully flexible rigging facilities, configurable 48 channel audio system with multiple loudspeaker layouts to suit different room configurations, variable acoustics to suit different performance types, over 250 dimmers, 100 lighting fixtures, video switching and projection. The Tension Wire Grid was design with twice the typical working load limit to allow up to eight adults at any one time.
For lighting control a MA Lighting grandMA2 was decided to be the best option due the immense popularity of MA consoles in Australia.
“The intention was that when the students graduate from the college they are experienced in the type of product they are likely to see in the field,” said Scot Willsallen, principal consultant at Auditoria. “The MA Lighting consoles are the most typical, almost the default console in Australia.
“The same can be said for Martin lighting fixtures so we specified four Martin MAC700; two wash and two profile units. Originally we specified twice as many moving fixtures but they had to be trimmed back due to budget restrictions. The idea is that the students have exposure to automated fixtures so when they leave the facility they have experience with real moving lights. So when they get a job they have experience in how to hang them, how to plug them in and how to program them. Martin is widely used and has low maintenance and good value for money.”
David Stephens, Technical Training Manager for the Catholic Education Office, describes the grandMA console as extremely flexible.
“The MAC700’s have been brilliant,” he stated. “They have been very reliable and quite easy to use.”
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