Sheraton Hotel, Bucharest

As integral part of the recent rebranding and renovation process, a new lighting scheme has been conceived for the outdoor walls of the building in order to revive the façades, previously illuminated in white light configuration, with stripes of lively and bright colors reaching up to the top roof. To do so, a powerful, long throw LED lighting fixture was strongly recommended, which should also be able to comply with the save energy, eco-friendly demands of the project. Conceived and implemented by the General Manager of the Sheraton Bucharest Hotel, Mr. Daniel Ben-Yehuda, the lighting project took about one year to be completed. In his plans, Mr. Ben-Yehuda wanted to establish the Sheraton Bucharest as an icon within the city’s architectural panorama through the biggest permanent illumination system ever installed in Romania.

Once initiated by Mr. Daniel Ben-Yehuda, the project was carefully checked, balanced and technically specified by Mr. Sorin Stanescu - PROFESSIONAL SOUND IMPACT SRL, the long standing specialized professional local partner of the owner-company. As soon as the suggested technical solution was accepted, Mr. Sorin Stanescu set up together with GRIVEN the mock-up phase and the final installation within weeks from inception. After eight weeks, thanks to the far reaching support of Mr Paolo Defendi, although the manufacturing facilities were almost on holidays all over Europe, the entire system was up and working. For the following eight weeks the system was monitored, different setting were tested and several scenarios tried, so that, when the hotel finally received the first guests, the entire building was up in colors. The system is unique in Bucharest and Romania, whereas all other high-rise buildings have gone for led-strip solutions on their façades.

The lighting design foresaw a color stripes based illumination reaching the top of the over 50 meters high tower with a perfectly uniform beam of colored light, selectively painting the vertical spaces among the windows. The fixtures have been installed at the base of the main tower, 7 units along the two longer sides, 5 units along each of the two shorter sides. A total number of 24 units of ONYX with ultra spot optics in RGBW color configuration were enough to successfully reach the required light effect on all the hotel sides.

Specific for architectural projects demanding for impressive though sustainable lighting performance, ONYX RGBW features an incomparably functional, ultra-narrow, sharp, long-shot beam of light capable of reaching previously unthinkable distances with amazing precision and even light distribution. Fitted with a combination of 96 RGBW high brightness LEDs that provide an unprecedented astonishing light output quality, Onyx is available also in cold, warm and dynamic white light for the utmost design flexibility.

The DMX lighting control has been to a Wall-TSC console. With 1024 DMX output channels and the capability of storing 500 scenes across 10 zones, WALL-TSC is a top-power, though easy-to-use, DMX controller fitted with a color screen clearly displaying scene name, area name, color dimmer and speed changes. The relevant light programming and product installation were implemented by SevenSys Group Ltd, directed by the General Manager Mr. Mirel Petcu, a well-known company in the professional audio-video market for its innovative custom solutions. For this project, due to technical issues, it was necessary to design special stands with 3-Axis orientation.

Sorin Stanescu - PROFESSIONAL SOUND IMPACT SRL, highly professional and efficient project coordinator, asserts: "It took us more than a year to finalize this very important project in terms of artistic design and technical solutions. After many on-site tests and mock-ups, ONYX turned definitely out to be the best choice to fulfill the required architectural lighting scheme. It was a really challenging job and we are all very happy about the final result. Through the high impact design achieved with GRIVEN’s lighting fixtures, Sheraton Bucharest has already become a major visual reference in the area.”