Project Team
Interior Design: Geyer
AV: Music Workshop
Lighting: Vision Lighting
Suppliers
Furniture: Cafe Culture, Hub Furniture, James Richardson, Kfive, Thonet, Mark Tuckey, Feelgood Designs, Smith Street Bizaar, Xilo, Chesterfield
Carpet: Bullion Agencies
Fabrics: Kvadrat Maharam
Tiles: Classic Ceremics
Geyer has just completed the interior design of Geelong’s newest venue, The Edge, for The Event Management Company. Located on the Geelong foreshore, the project is a joint venture of Geelong Football star, Cameron Ling, and three other investors and promises to be a popular destination for both locals and tourists.
Geyer’s brief was simply to create an intimate ambience regardless of whether it was day or night, while also incorporating a generous al fresco dining area on the beachfront. Given a free hand, Geyer’s design team took inspiration from classic New York loft style architecture, making the most of the abundant natural light available the seaside location and featuring high ceilings, exposed services, and a sleek industrial aesthetic.
The Factory circa 1962 also provided further inspiration with the inclusion of display case screening devices for ‘collections,’ eye-catching artworks, and the quirky use of domestic doors in the lounge ceiling, bar front, and primary entry.
The challenge was to ensure that the venue remained warm and inviting even through the colder winter months. A bar was therefore installed along the interior perimeter to allow the creation of smaller lounge spaces surrounding an internal fireplace. This also provided direct access to service for al fresco patrons and made product placements to be visible from the street. At the heart of both outer and inner spaces, the bar has become a stunning centerpiece and draw card for the venue.
Careful placement of narrow beam downlights are installed only where they’re needed, and have been used to create pools of light that provides the space with vibrant mood and drama. Decorative pendants have been chosen to reinforce the overall design theme, and have been positioned to help define the bar and table areas.
The bottle display cabinets have been lit using programmable, colour change L.E.D luminaires. The various sequences of colours that have been programmed provide the cabinets and their contents with dynamic, eye catching light. Low level light to the banquet seating in the lounge areas works in harmony with the decorative wall lights and pools of light to the floor, to create a warm and cosy environment for people to relax and let time slip by.
Dynalite equipment has been used to enable control of the entire lighting installation. Simple ‘scenes’ have been programmed to allow the manager to change the look and feel of the bar during the course of the day and night at the touch of a button. Various manufacturers of luminaires included: inside, Masson, Space Cannon, the Lighting Group, Lumascape, Dean Phillips and Antonageli
Berlin Chair
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The brief to Nick Russel of Music Workshop from the client was quite clear cut - high end, un-compromised audio with a tasteful yet flexible vision component that does not impact on the aesthetics of the building.
“There were challenges from the beginning but as a whole the end result is terrific,” said Nick. “The venue is a multi-storey complex with residents above meaning ceiling cavities were small (restricting the size of the speakers we could use) and that isolation of sound was also important.”
In-ceiling speakers maintained the aesthetics of the venue, which was painstakingly designed and constructed, so as not to have an eye-sore of box speakers hanging from the walls. However ceiling speakers are renowned for poor quality sound particularly in the low frequency range.
“We combated this issue by installing high powered ceiling speakers with an enclosed back for better low frequency response instead of installing a sub woofer which would upset the neighbours,” explained Nick. “The speakers we used are by a Spanish manufacturer D.A.S. and are more than comparable both in price and sound quality to more recognizable brands such as Bose and JBL.”
The outdoor speakers (also DAS) were deliberately selected and placed so that to aim across the face of the building instead of out towards the street, this restricts the spill to nearby merchants and also back inside the venue allowing isolation between zones to occur.
The venue was always intended to retain class while maintaining an entertaining environment. They didn’t want to look like a sports bar, but still needed offer what people want.
The background music system consists of seven zones each with individual volume control so that depending on the mood or the clientele in particular areas of the venue the atmosphere could be accurately controlled from one location behind the bar. The system needed to be simple to operate so that all bar staff could control the atmosphere.
“We knew that it is of great importance to ‘read the crowd’ and give them what they want, so we installed an ‘8 x 8’ audiovisual matrix system that allows the staff to send any audio, any video or any combination of the two to any area of the venue they desired whether it be the speaker system, the DJ system or the plasma screens,” said Nick. “This means that any given Saturday customers can enjoy a coffee outside in the alfresco dining area with easy listening music on in the background or crank up the footy match on the plasma by the bar simultaneously. This also allows clients to book the front lounge area for a special function like a 21st birthday party, put on a DVD with a photo slideshow and listen to their own music without disturbing the rest of the venue.”
The high number of speakers is so that each punter, regardless of their location, receives the same high quality audio as the next. The more speakers you have, the quieter each can be and the more even the sound is distributed.
The most important part of any installation is the infra-structure and planning. If you consider every possible need that may be encountered and allow for that in the cabling and design of the system then the outcome is complete flexibility and a system that caters for all punters and client requirements.
The 25 years of experience that comes from a well established audiovisual company, a confident client with a very clear view and a terrific venue are what make this installation a complete success.