Project Description
Geodesic Dome
Back in the day the team at EC Creative Services enjoyed a club night along with the best of them so when we were asked to look at a job for a nightclub we agreed faster than you could say ‘glow stick’.
Little did we know that the job would throw up a maths problem that even Carol Vorderman might have balked at – the design and build of an enormous metal geodesic dome made up of 76 hexagons and pentagons (repeated in five different segments) which needed to be manufactured to meticulous measurements.
The maths conundrum kept one of our engineers quiet for a full two weeks as he dusted off his A Level geometry text book and tackled the complex, custom design needed to safely distribute the stress across the structure. Once designed we built a scaled sample (pictured) before going into large scale full production.
The dome itself was manufactured over four days by our specialist metal fabricators and welders using mild steel metal box sections, two days were then spent on test assembly before the dome was deconstructed, put onto a pallet in pieces and transported across the Pennines. Once in-situ this giant geometric jigsaw was installed by our team over the course of a week before being signed off by a structural engineer.
Finally LED video flex was fixed to the dome and then mapped and programmed to create an on-going series of incredible lighting special effects to illuminate the 3,000 clubbers below.
So that’s the largest nightclub in Leeds sorted, next stop Ibiza?
Well, we can but dream…
Interested in hearing more?
If you’d like to talk to us about anything related to set design and build then we’d be delighted to hear from you.