(08/08/2013) The brand new Ghelamco Arena in Gent new home to football team KAA Gent has just opened in a blaze of glory, complete with a cutting-edge media fa ade on all four sides and a spectacular exterior architectural lighting scheme designed by leading European creative visual design practice, Painting With Light.
Genk, Belgium based Paining With Light was asked by Philips Lighting Solutions to propose a complete scheme with bespoke control solution for specialist visuals in certain areas of the new venue. Their concept was chosen by the project's Chief Developer Paul Gheysen, CEO of Ghelamco.
Led by Luc Peumans, the PWL team utilised their cross disciplinary experiences in the worlds of entertainment and rock n' roll and their penchant for stylish building lighting to deliver a spectacular result in a very short timescale of just under two months!
This was the biggest challenge, but one that Peumans and his team also took completely in their stride!
It was a fantastic project in which to be involved, enthuses Peumans, And I am very proud of the results achieved in this extremely short timescale. It was also a great collaboration between us and Philips who supported us through every stage .
The dynamic and highly flexible Media fa ade is built from approximately 9 kilometres (85000) of Philips CK iColor Flex LMX product flexible strands of intense colour changing LED pixels 12 cm apart. These are placed in vertical lines with a vertical pitch of 12.5 centimetres apart all around the building. The horizontal pitch is 115 cm and the fa ade covers over 10.000 square metres in total.
Sixty-four Philips CK eW Graze Powercore LED strips are incorporated into the design.
The bespoke control system for these involves a Coolux Media Player Pro server running CK's Video Systems Manager component and Coolux's Media Manager Pro, with Coolux Widget Designer PRO triggering everything. This lighting is controlled from a grandMA2 on PC console running via KiNet protocol.
Painting With Light has also produced a quantity of custom media content for the installation, some of it highlighting sponsors logos and other clips consisting of high-impact ambient material and texturing, converging in eye-catching animations.
Special events and information or promotions can also be graphically displayed or appear as text on the exterior of the Arena and new content can be produced and programmed into the system at any time.
This feature also enables the building to stand out completely from its surroundings as an iconic structure on the local landscape. The unique Arena's location, close to the highway intersection, makes it a perfect media tool and it has a potential viewing capacity of 3 million people per month!
The exterior lighting elements feature over 500 Philips LED fixtures of various types including ColorBlasts and Graze Powercore.
One of the reasons the Paining With Light scheme was chosen was due to its commitment to sustainability, power saving capacity and low on-going running costs with it being primarily based on LED fixtures.
The roof is outlined with another 140 x Philips Color Kinetics eW Graze Powercore LED strips which can dramatically change colour. The cantilevered overhanging sections around the roof are coloured using 232 x Philips CK ColorBlast PowerCore LED floods. At ground level, the gallery level section of the building shell is illuminated with another 220 x ColorBlast PowerCores.
All of these lighting fixtures have been pixel mapped to allow video content to be run through them as well as onto the Media Fa ade, allowing lighting to be matched to the current video content on display if desired, producing various colour glows and other subtle but sympathetic effects.
The lighting and the Media Fa ade can also be triggered by sound inputs and there are a number of inbuilt public interactivity options in the system which will be further developed once the 20,000 capacity Ghelamco Arena is in day-to-day use.
At the front entrance, the lighting design is completed with eight panels on the outside which are up-lit with 64 x ColorBlazes, plus eight advertising posts each with three Clay Paky Sharpies mounted in Igloo weather domes on the tops for creating piercing beam effects.
Working alongside Peumans on the Painting With Light team were Project Manager Geert Moors, Control System Designer Dimi Theuwissen, Media Server Programmer Katleen Selleslagh and Media Content Designer Michael Alfar. The Philips Account Manager was Bjorn Van Ghoetem and their Project Managers were Dave van de Moere and Sven Colin.
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
(08/08/2013) The brand new Ghelamco Arena in Gent new home to football team KAA Gent has just opened in a blaze of glory, complete with a cutting-edge media fa ade on all four sides and a spectacular exterior architectural lighting scheme designed by leading European creative visual design practice, Painting With Light.
