The Sfera restaurant, part of the Tower-2000 project in Moscow’s City Business Center, offers a unique dining experience, to say the least. Occupying the ground and first floors of the tower with its enormous glass surfaces, the tower almost seems to be lifting straight up from the ground. The internal layout of the restaurant is also extremely atypical in its arrangement because the space is divided into a combination of rooms, areas, and corridors on different levels that constitute a complex intersection of shiny stainless steel, thick glass plates, and luminous columns.
At the center of the composition is a globe-shaped decorative element. The metallic scaffolding rests on a glass bridge that connects the two balconies of the first level and gives the impression that the sphere is hovering in the air. Above it, an enormous metal cone rises upward, with a support ring at the base making it possible to fix the lighting system. Another original element of the fittings is represented by the shimmering “river” in the floor on the first level, which opens the space of the lower room.
Four Stage Zoom 1200s, four Golden Spot 1200s, and eight Golden Color 1200s from Italian manufacturer Clay Paky were used along with 1200-watt projectors. The Stage Zoom 1200 and Golden Color 1200 projectors were positioned extremely high at the top level of the sidewalls and on the side shelves under the bridge in the center of the room to bring the atmosphere to life with rotating prisms that add both volume and movement to the graphics and images. An unlimited number of combinations of different colors, special effects, gobos, and prisms provide an incredibly vast range of creative choices. Furthermore, the projectors have a CMY trichromatic system that allows varied color tones and gradual sequences.
A special apparatus was also installed which is capable of creating a series of rays that continuously change and form fractal images. The projection of these rays on the complex three-dimensional structures of the Sfera restaurant sphere subsequently made it possible to widen the range of instruments at the disposal of the lighting designer.
All the lighting products are managed from a LightMaster Controller unit programmed to create a wide range of moods and situations to accommodate a large variety of events. This control panel is easy to use and allows personnel without special training to reproduce a lighting show synchronized to music.
