The Costa Concordia was recently delivered by Italian shipbuilding company Fincantieri at the Sestri Ponente shipyard in Genoa, Italy. Large in all senses, the Costa Concordia is 112,000 tons with total guest capacity of 3,780. She is the largest cruise ship in the Costa fleet, and the largest of any line operating in the Mediterranean.
A special feature onboard is the exterior LED video wall integrated into the Lido pool deck décor. Using Barco’s OLite 510 LED modules, the video wall is remotely controlled from the ship’s broadcast center with a variety of different video sources. These include DVD, live satellite, terrestrial broadcasts, Sony Playstation, and mpeg video playback from a Doremi Nugget player. The primary audio reinforcement for the video wall is a stereo line-array loudspeaker system using Electro-Voice XLVC components. Audio is also broadcast around the Lido deck in five languages via programmable FM transmitters and the guests are provided with personal receivers.
Lending their extensive expertise to the project, Nautilus Entertainment Design (NED) served as the designers, project managers and system commissioning managers for the 25 entertainment venues on board. These included the 1,400 seat Athens theatre, the Lisbona Disco, with a two deck high video wall, and the Samsara Spa, a 20,000 square foot facility spread over two decks.
Bringing their 12 years of design experience for other maritime facilities to the process, NED was able to work closely with Costa, Carnival Corporate Shipbuilding, Fincantieri and HMS Italia, the entertainment contractor for the project. This is the fifth ship that NED has helped build for Costa, and the company is working on three more ships in development.
NED’s Michael Lindauer and Denis McCubbin provided overall project management, with audio design by Alan Edwards and video system design by Matthew Hodkinson. The onsite NED manager was Matt Howes, supported by Tom Nicks, Graham Hall, and Don Hill.