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New Leoland space opens in Ukraine with Robe lighting installation

Leoland, a 300,000 square meter sports, educational entertainment and leisure complex for the whole family in Lviv, Ukraine, has just opened a new multipurpose conference/concert space, which enhances its facilities at the heart of the city.

The room features 270-degree projections and is lit with Robe products including eight Viva CMYs to cover the stage, together with twenty-six LEDWash 600+s and eight ParFect 150s that are positioned around the ceiling, all delivered by one of Robe’s Ukrainian distributors, Sound House, based in Dnipro.

The lights were chosen for their size and power - the height to the ceiling is 5.7 metres, so physically smaller fixtures were needed, and they had to be bright and intense to fill the space and to dovetail in with the video projections for which Sound House worked closely with video specialist Front Picture, who supplied a bespoke projection control system.

The multipurpose room is one phase involved in expanding the existing Leoland property, and it was driven by a private investor. The planning for the venue started at the end of 2020 intended as a central venue for business events and gatherings. The original technical installation date should have been March 2022, but the war started the month before.

Since then, people’s immediate needs have shifted, so Leoland’s whole emphasis has also moved more to it being more of a social hub that can be enjoyed by all the public of all ages as well as those engaged in business. There is a requirement to stage commercial events which is starting to grow again, and these are much needed right now to stimulate different areas of Ukraine’s adapting economy.

Sound House created a full technical design package - audio, lighting, and AV - for this new multipurpose room and proposed it to their client after taking their brief, explains CEO Andrey Garkaviy. They then won the contract to supply and install all of it. The stipulations included that the room must be able to stage anything from a medium size conference plenary session or a product launch to a similar standing or seated live performance/entertainment show with band, dance group or other artists. The proposed design contained a medium to high level of specification. In Ukraine, the company/team supplying the winning design will regularly get the chance to also supply the kit, which is why many of the sales and distribution companies there will also have a projects division.

Once the war started in February 2022, the multipurpose venue was put on hold, but after a few months the client decided to reactivate it. Those left at Sound House - several crew and staff have joined the ZSU (Ukrainian Armed Forces) while others have found work abroad - “were just ecstatic that the project was able to continue - you can imagine!”, says Garkaviy.

However, this also wasn’t the biggest challenge for Sound House by that time. On March 11th, 2022, two weeks after the start of the war, two Kalibr cruise missiles ripped into their warehouse in Dnipro, completely destroying the building and everything in it including the Robe ParFects and Viva CMYs, a bunch of audio and AV kit which had already arrived in readiness for the installation. The complex security guard and his dog were killed in the strike.

The LEDWash 600+s had not yet arrived, and as soon as the invasion began, Garkaviy asked the Robe factory to leave everything not yet delivered safe in the Czech Republic. When the project cautiously re-started in mid-2023 he had to re-order all the kit that had been destroyed in the missile strike.

The wartime economy also brings many more logistical nightmares - massive increases in the time and cost of equipment and road transport, crew shortages and the fact that everything takes longer to install on site amidst constant power and network outages. But everyone was determined.

The installation work was completed in August and September and the new room hosted its first events at the end of September. The Sound House team has already installed additional cabling and control infrastructure to expand all the systems - lighting, sound, and multimedia - in the future, which will include some more moving head luminaires.

Pictured (group shot, left to right): Alexey Konichenko (Sound House chief of project department), Andrii Garkavyi (CEO of Sound House), Dyachkin Volodymyr (customer’s technical service), Alexander Yuvchenko (field engineer); Ukrainian singer Mila Nitich. (Photos: O. Biront/Paul Clarke/Leoland/Louise Stickland/Stepan Yarko)

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