Lighting the room for worship and production.
St Paul's Anglican Castle Hill is one of the Hills District’s larger Anglican congregations, gathering more than a thousand people each Sunday across multiple services. The church is also home to CityAlight, the church's music ministry, and hosts conferences, concerts, recordings and other events through the year.
The existing house lighting was a variety of incandescent fittings that had reached the end of their useful life. Compounded with increased difficulty in sourcing replacement lamps, higher power draw, insufficient light for members reading service notes, and no way to create atmosphere for events or performances, a new solution was needed.
The church approached us to design a replacement scheme that would meet the following requirements: light the room properly for a service, support the production lighting rig during events, and run on a fraction of the power.
Completed
July 2024
Lighting Control
Visual Productions B-Station2
Luminaires
Anolis Ambiane
Designer
Lux Imperium
Installer
Lux Imperium
Programmer
Lux Imperium
Photos
Steve Hendy
We specified Anolis Ambiane full-colour mixing fittings as they provide a high CRI white light for everyday use and a saturated colour when the occasion calls for it. They are brighter and more energy efficient than the incandescent fittings they replaced resulting in lower running costs.
To ensure even coverage across the auditorium, we completed a full lighting design analysis. The result was a higher fitting count than the previous layout, with revised positions for several existing fittings. The structural trusses in the room were never intended to carry house lighting, so we designed a custom bracket solution that attaches the fittings cleanly to the trusses.
House lighting at St Paul's needs to support two methods of operation. On a Sunday morning, anyone on the welcome team should be able to bring the room up with a single button press. During a CityAlight recording or a conference, the production team needs full control from the lighting console.
We installed Visual Productions B-Station2 controllers at numerous wall positions around the auditorium for local button control of presets — house up, house down, and preset recalls. For events, the same fittings respond to sACN from the production lighting console, providing flexibility for the lighting designer to theme the room.
The auditorium is now properly lit for services, recordings, and events. The welcome team has a simple wall control for everyday use, and the production team has full console control for events and recordings.
