The French National Railway Company (SNCF) has instituted an important change aimed at improving its position in the face of stiff competition from other European transport companies. The first element that SNCF has put significant effort into is renovation of its many key railway stations.
At the Austerlitz Railway Station in Paris, the process has just begun and will last until 2025. An important part of the new look is illumination of the lattice structure of the main hall in order to visually bring it in step with the 21st century.
The requirement was to bring animation to the station without disturbing the daily activity or altering the architecture. Starting from this brief, Martin France was able to propose several ideas, including the decision to use the main structure as a support for light and to avoid as much as possible the projection of light onto the roof.
François Guillet, CEO of Lumières Utiles, recreated the complete station in Martin’s lighting and set design software, Martin ShowDesigner (MSD), and tested several types of Martin projectors. In order to fine-tune the concept, Martin France set up a working session on site and the Exterior 200 LED was chosen as the best option. The Exterior 200 LED is a long-life programmable luminaire offering full RGB and amber and white colour mixing. It can deliver up to 1,400 lumens for 139 W and is available in several angles from 13° to 32°.
Martin France then worked with technical partner Equipscène on system integration and with François Guillet on the controller and network aspects. A Martin M-PC, a PC-based version of the Martin Maxxyz and M-Series consoles, linked to a Martin Ether2DMX8 router with a Martin MaxModule Programmer, was used for programming.
In total, 26 Exterior 200 LED luminaires were installed, four luminaires per arch: one on each side lighting the piles. The installation automatically follows the natural sunset and sunrise thanks to the Maxxyz Manager plugin included with the M-PC.
