Sub Zero Essex

Sub Zero interior shot

ESSEX

SUB ZERO

VENUES, JANUARY 2007, COMMENTS

Essex University Students Union’s legendary Underground live music venue has seen a complete redesign and transformation into Sub Zero - a contemporary club and lounge environment. The project has included expanding the venue’s capacity by 200 to 1200 and is the final phase of a three-part, £3 million refurbishment programme at the Students Union building in Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, instigated by the Union’s GM Antony Blackshaw to “bring the facilities up to the standards that we believe Essex students want and expect from their SU”. The funding for the whole project was a combination of loan and investment capital, the vast majority of which has to be repaid. It was therefore essential that the redeveloped space was commercially viable and a financially independent operation.

West Yorkshire-based Heron Design came onboard to produce initial designs, having delivered the very successful Phase 2 of the SU building makeover. The main challenges, remembers design director Jonathan Morgan, were installing a full ventilation into the limited underground space; dissecting the room so that from all corners there were views of the stage; maintaining the flow through entrance/exits around the bars to prevent bottle necks; and introducing disabled access into a very low level space. As well as meeting these requirements, he (working with Dan Dickinson as lead designer) developed a design characterised by stylish finishes, rich in colour, with intimacy in the right areas and injecting energy where required.

They tripled the bar space to aid the efficiency and speed of service. They also made the bars a dynamic visual feature of the overall room design with patterned perspex fascia panels, back-lit with soft neon. A touch of class above the bars comes with the addition of some funky dual pendant Caboche lights from Italian manufacturers Foscarini. The design also includes several elaborate circular break-out areas. One features flocked wallpaper and funky chandeliers - in a jaunty mix of UK style classical Indian restaurant and deco diner.

For the stage, Heron came up with the idea of a set of removable stainless steel balustrades around its edges which would turn the area into a large dancing podium for club nights - creating an extra 200 capacity when necessary.

For daytime use, with the house lights on, Sub Zero is now also an airy, aesthetically pleasing, contemporary room. A curved ‘zero’ theme punctuates throughout and continues across the resin floor, which incorporates five different colours flowing through the space like a wave.

PAI won the pitch to design, specify install and co-ordinate the new venue’s systems and technical integration, including production and effects lighting and the sound system needed for the new space plus DJ booth.

“The investment in sound and light was a fundamental part of this project as this is one of the USPs of the venue,” says Antony. “What we wanted to achieve was the wow factor for students in terms of the light show, but to have sufficient flexibility for it to be usable for club nights, live bands, karaoke, comedy, presentations, etc. It also had to be able to be easily programmable to allow changes of feel over time.”

PAI Group technical director Andy Bonehill specified the system, and project manager Stuart Williams oversaw the site work and installation. Central to the technical brief was designing a sound system that delivered the power of the previous one but was neat and unobtrusive, had a small footprint, even coverage in all areas of the room, and could be utilised for all the chosen multipurpose applications.

For PAI, this was the ideal opportunity to use a KV2 ES Series audio system. The ES Series, manufactured in the Czech republic, is a compact, flexible speaker active system with all the electronics and amplification housed in a separate unit - the EPAK 2500, consisting of four task-specific power amplifiers mounted onto a massive heat sink. The control system incorporates electronic crossover filters, time correction, equalization, system protection, level controls and a unique bass management circuit that lets you control bass extension and attack. Locating the active electronics package outboard means a lighter, easier to handle ultra flexible system.

The main Sub Zero ground stacked arrays comprise two ES 1.0s, two ES 1.8 subs and two ES 2.5 subs a side, together with EX12 speakers for infills. Electrovoice Evid speakers are dotted around the room’s peripheral areas and utilsed for the background sound system during daylight operation.

The company supplied an Allen & Heath Xone mixer and all processing is via BSS Soundweb.

For lighting, the SU wanted an industry standard control desk and so chose an Avolites Pearl: ideal for visiting LDs as well as their house operators. They re-used some of the existing lighting including lots of parcans, some Martin Manias and Coemar i-Spots. With the night time ambience essentially created through lighting and visuals, this was a crucial area.

New fixtures include Coemar ProSpot and ProWash 250 fixtures, and Robe Fusion fixtures from their club range have been added to the periphery areas, utilised for projection effects. There’s also a set of Hungaroflash DMX strobes and a Jem Club Smoke system. For additional visual titillation, four Cirrect Super 3 3-colour DPSS lasers were added into the equation, one rigged in each corner of the room, these are DMX controlled through the Pearl, and provide great effects.

Essential to PAI’s plan was the necessity of providing an overall multi-purpose technical infrastructure that could be modified and easily de-rigged and re-rigged. Bonehill and his team therefore devised this flexibility through the use of a system of light bars and multiple DMX universes. Data signals are all distributed via a pathway Pathport Ethernet system.

Several fundamentals had to be addressed in the overall room design, starting with the capacity increase which was needed to boost turnover. The space also had to be truly multi-functional to accomodate the eclectic nature of student union entertainment programmes. Thirdly, it needed to be a popular, comfortable and attractive venue that people clamoured to get into, and removed from prosaic ambience of its predecessor.

Essex also wanted it to have the essence and feel of a quality club venue, with the extra capacity for staging live gigs and comedy nights. Additionally, they also wanted the venue to have a character and a life of its own just as Underground had.

The result of the team’s efforts is a venue that, since its opening, has proved an overwhelming success. Currently Sub Zero opens for mainstream club nights on Fridays and Saturdays, with live music on selected Saturdays, when it’s also open to the public. Currently it’s also open on Thursdays for a variety of events. For the first time the Union can now stage comedy, and the fact that there are now facilities like dressing rooms - added by reclaiming a previously unused pocket of external space - is also opening EUSU to a whole new raft of bands now actively seeking to play there.

Images: Jim Ellam

From: January 2007 Issue

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