Opened in September, 2018, ALTA was designed by the award-winning team behind OMNI, winner of Live Design Excellence Awards 2016.
The name “ALTA” derives from Latin, which conveys “high” and “profound” in feminine form as simply one look at the staggering 30 feet-high ceiling immediately gives the meaning away to anyone under her towering embrace.
Indeed, it’s virtually impossible to neglect the spacious interior once stepped inside ALTA. “With our previous project OMNI, our goal was to provide an all-encompassing experience”, thus explained David Hsia, director of the project. “How do we excel ourselves in the next project? We looked into the concept of “excel” and took the meaning literally, that’s how we came up with the idea of ALTA, a club venue that not only envelopes its guests horizontally but also vertically. A true immersion in every sense of the word.”
In order to emphasize on the verticality, the joint-design team consisting of theLOOP Production and E-Tai Space Design has chosen the concept of “flower” as its theme and centerpiece as it captures the feminine aspect of “ALTA” perfectly. It’s tranquility and femininity renders the massive ceiling structure awe-inspiring but also welcoming at the same time.
The major challenge of the project is the blossom-inspired ceiling that we christened “生命之花” (Flower of Life), which celebrates Mother Nature by imitating the changing of colours with the passing of time. In order to achieve that, each “flower petal” on the ceiling is conceived, designed, and later hand-crafted with the notion of full-on integration of custom-made LED panels with the software to control each of them in mind, giving life to the flower as a whole but also leaves room for each petal to paint its own charisma.
To compliment on the colossal flower petals, the stage design is also a visual delight that does not shy away from the magnificent floral sky above. The gigantic display mappings aptly named Motion Canvas behind the stage is woven with 4mm pitch LED panels, all concaved at the top. It's 47 ft in width, 15.5 ft in height, complete with a monstrous Hippotizer Taiga server and powered by Resolume Arena to deliver pixel-perfect 4K digital imagery and beyond.
Furthermore, in order to honor the “all-encompassing” concept introduced by the previous project OMNI, the design team carefully entwined a true surrounding LED panel belt that circles the whole venue. Dubbed as “天河” (Cosmic River), the belt itself curves at every turn, making it effectively as fluid as a river at the same time as captivating as our Milky Way.
To add the icing on the cake, each table at the venue has a dedicated laser cue that interacts with ALTA’s taylor-made detachable champagne display stand. Each laser emitter is precision-pinpointed to its designated table so that the miniature disco ball on top of the display stand reflects the laser in all directions, making bottle-popping a unique experience unlike others.
All in all, the surface area of LED panels comes to a staggering total of 1110 ft2 at ALTA. Every angle you see from the inside there’s bound to be a display. On top with the Flower of Life quietly gazing down upon her children while the Cosmic River cuddles them with celestial wonders, ALTA lives up to her name by truly delivering an all-encompassing experience.
Selected Gear List
1651 x 96.8 in2 4mm LED video tiles
30 x Robe Spikie®
12 x Aryton Magic Blade FX
12 x Acme LED-ST5000 RGB
6 x Acme E-200MC
5 x 2W RGB Laser
1 x grandMA2 light
1 x grandMA Network Processing Unit
1 x Green Hippo Taiga
1 x Antari HZ-500 EA
Design Team
Design Team: theLOOP Production & E-Tai Space Design
Project Director: David Hsia (theLOOP)
Interior Design: Sean Chang (E-Tai)
Project Manager: Cindi Liu
Project Engineer: Hsiao Cheng Kuo
Lighting Designer: Drew Sung
Visual Team Lead: Duncan Chen