Cream, one of the country’s leading dance brands, commissioned Terraform to build an immersive lighting environment for the Vault stage at Creamfields in August 2016.
A colosseum of containers and cubes
Working to a brief from Events Company UK, we built what was effectively a colosseum: shipping containers stacked two high, linked by arches and walls of bespoke LED IBC cubes.
The two materials do different jobs. The containers give mass, height and a hard industrial edge; the cubes soften and animate it. Stacked together they make an enclosure that reads as architecture from outside and as an environment once you are within it.
Built to hold a thousand people
The structure had to safely hold over a thousand festival-goers at once, which sets the terms for everything else — load paths, exit routes, sightlines, and what happens when a crowd surges rather than stands.
A structure that can be walked through by a handful of people is a different object from one certified to enclose a thousand at a dance festival. The design was built around that number from the start rather than scaled up to meet it.
Handing control to the show
We supplied the stage’s lighting director with a full DMX plot so the cubes could be driven from the main desk and folded into the live show rather than run as a separate installation.
Terraform stayed on site for all four days of the festival to keep the installation running safely.
