LIV Miami
March 2009
Creative firm Seed Design were charged with rejuvenating the club, giving it a world-class, contemporary look whilst at the same time reviving the venue's glamourous heyday when the likes of Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack pals took to the stage. The club was part of the original 1954 resort designed by Morris Lapidus and features an impressive 88-foot domed ceiling. As a starting point, Seed Design (Vincent C elano and Gonzalo Bustamante) worked with Focus Lighting (headed by Paul Gregory) to created an impressive lighting scheme for the dome, embedding it with 585 Color Kinetics iColor Cove MX linear LEDs and adding a wash from 300 Colorblast12 fixtures hidden around its perimeter. The lightweight linear LEDs were fixed to the existing roof structure before being ensconced by a special acoustic treatment. Controlled by an e:cue Media Engine 2 alongside five e:cue Butler compact DMX output devices, the ceiling can strobe, colour-change or even act as a giant low-resolution video matrix. The complete system can be operated using a touch screen running e:cue's Action Pad or via an e:cue fader unit in the DJ booth.
The main space also features glowing stair risers and framed VIP booths on the mezzanine. Classical chandeliers create a visual connection to the warm sparkle of the backlit VIP frames and add a touch of elegant contrast to the modernist space. All architectural lighting has been pre-programmed and, using an e:cue excite+ DMX interface, can be triggered by the house MA Lighting console.
Though construction started early in the year, it wasn't until the middle of 2008 that the heads at Fontainebleau settled upon Miami operator Dave Grutman to take charge of the club. With LIV scheduled for a September opening Grutman, wasted no time in ensuring the look and sound of venue would be world class. Having worked on the Miami club scene for many years, Grutman had very definite ideas about what sound system he wanted and who he wanted to install it. He put in a call to Dan Agne of Sound Investment.
"I'd worked with Dave Grutman in the past and he's a big fan of both our company and Funktion One," says Agne. "He knows he can count on us and he also knew he was going through a very precarious situation with trying to get this club open in time."
Although a sound system had already been specified before Grutman joined the project, he was adamant that Funktion One be used instead. Understandably there was some resistance from the club's financers, but together Grutman and Agne convinced them that it was the right route to take.
The club's classic aesthetic meant Sound Investment were asked to hide the speakers as much as possible. This posed a challenge for Agne and the team; there were only two points on the ground floor where speakers could be placed: under the banquette seating and under the DJ booth, both at opposite ends of the room.
"We had a massive territory to cover with just two points of bass so our approach was to use F221s stacked two high and make them responsible only for sub-bass, so it would penetrate all nook and crannies," says Agne. "It's the only speaker I know of that could have kept up with that demand because it has such a tremendous amount of output. You get a frequency range that directionally you have a hard time pin-pointing – and the bass bins were hidden too so you have this warm sub-bass permeating the room and carrying the physical signature of the sound."
The addition of F215s – hidden below the VIP terrace - delivering the bass and midbass and AX88s providing the mid-highs, makes for a great sounding room. A removable railing allows the rear VIP level to be converted into a full stage, which turns LIV into a fully functional live performance venue. Above this stage, where visuals were not such a concern, the team installed two clusters of F215s and Res 4s.
It was Dan Agne who suggested Grutman contact Steve Lieberman of SJ Lighting to take over responsibility for the club's theatrical lighting. The two had worked together on a range of past projects, including Prive, Mansion NY and Rok Vegas, and Agne knew Lieberman could deliver in the short time available. "We put everything else on hold, put a whole package together and slammed out documents for them in under two weeks," says Lieberman. "I would say it was probably about three months from me entering into the contract to finally pulling the trigger and beginning the process of putting the system in."
Working closely with Seed Design, Lieberman's lighting scheme worked to enhance the decadent, high-end feel of the venue. "We tried to keep the club very clean, giving them lots of layers of effects without anything being overly obtrusive to the architecture," he says.
Aside from Focus Lighting's iCove LEDs, no fixtures could be hung from the main dome. As a solution, a spider-truss, curved to the same radius as the ceiling, was installed to act as the main hanging point for much of the theatrical lighting.
The primary moving light fixture used was Elations Design Spot 575E. "Just this past year I've started using Elation fixtures," says Lieberman. "They've really stepped up their quality of manufacturing on this particular series of fixtures and they're now using dichroic glass reflectors so the output's really clean.