SF equips Bomontiada
Published: MEA
TURKEY: SF Sound and Lighting has installed audio equipment into a number of venues inside Istanbul’s recently redeveloped Bomonti historic brewery, Bomontiada. The multi-purpose space features a range of cafés, lounge bars, restaurants and live music venues.
SF was called in to cover Populist, Kiva and Café C. Populist is a seven-zone venue with different concepts in each area requiring individual music sources and volume control. The project was for D.ream and Spanish design office Lagranja was responsible for approving the sound system design.
‘As a part of Dogus Holding, D.ream is one of the superior restaurant and entertainment groups in Turkey,’ said Fırat Akın, project manager at SF Sound and Lighting. ‘D.ream and its partner Pozitif Group redesigned and organised Bomonti’s Historic Brewery. We have a good relationship with D.ream as we have worked together on many projects. When they needed complex sound system design, they knew that SF was right choice.’
The most obvious challenge for SF came with the restrictions placed on it due to the historic nature of the site. ‘Sound system installation of historic buildings can present a range of challenges,’ said Mr Akın. ‘The Historical Building Renewal Regulations comprise a series of technical construction rules. Banging nails to walls was forbidden. As a result of this, to cover all the angles, special techniques were developed to hang speakers. Also, utility lines couldn’t be strung out on walls, thus all cables were passed through galvanised pipes.’
The different spaces in the various areas of the historic brewery each required a sound system that could meet its unique needs. For example, the two DJ halls have been fitted with JBL VRX 900 series constant curvature arrays in order to get a club-style sound. The various lounges, meanwhile, have been fitted with JBL Control 65P/T loudspeakers and the restaurants have Control 25 speakers. The JBL side of the project continues with Control 29 monitors in use for the live music venue and Control 25AV speakers covering the rooftop terrace. Finally, JBL Control 25 speakers are again called into action for BGM in two further venues, Kiva and Café C.
Away from the loudspeakers, the control side of the solution was another area handled by SF. The team required a control system that would allow for ad-hoc changes and pre-set configurations for factors such as the EQ and delay settings in each venue as well as central control over the whole system. To meet these needs, SF has installed a solution based on BSS processors and Crestron automation. ‘It’s a very powerful but simple to use system that really accommodates our client’s needs,’ said Mr Akın.
With the system designed, SF’s final challenge was the timescale. It had 10 days to install the solutions into the various venues and achieved this with teams working day and night.