How INFiLED Helped Kuchem Bring Large-Scale LED to an Historic Space

Overview

The Humboldt Carré is a well-respected conference and event centre, nestling in the heart of Berlin. It’s created a suite of sophisticated high-tech event spaces within the walls of a historic building.

For its Atrium – a 300-seater architectural beauty of a space – their AV partner Kuchem, working with the INFiLED team, designed and installed a large-scale 10×5.5m LED screen engineered from INFiLED’s EZ Series(now upgraded to EZmk2 Series),  that could deliver stunning visuals for all kinds of events, without disrupting the integrity of the historic interior.

 About Kuchem

Kuchem’s outstanding success as one of Germany’s most reputable AV businesses is built on more than 45 years of hard work, trust and expertise. Customer satisfaction and up-to-the-nanosecond tech is at the heart of what they do. They’re a super-safe pair of hands and trusted by big names, for instance, the organisers of COP23.

The Vision: Big Ambition, Big Screen, Historic Space

The Humboldt Carré is a conference centre that’s certainly not business as usual. Set in the heart of historic Berlin, Germany, it has a reputation as one of the most attractive and popular venues in the city. Outside, it’s all elegance and charm, with an Italianate sandstone facade that dates back to 1901. That elegance continues inside the building, with 13 event rooms, stylish with high ceilings, dark parquet and beautiful sandstone walls.

The rooms are fitted with the quality AV tech that Humboldt Carré clients have come to expect. So when it came to refit the Atrium, the centre’s impressive palace-style conference hall with, yes, a massive glass dome – the Humboldt Carré team felt ready to go large.

The team from Kuchem introduced the idea of a showstopper LED wall. Something with ambition, that would sell the space. Something big, bold and cool that would attract even more event organisers.

Flexibility was also one of the key requirements –  the LED wall had to support a myriad of uses, depending on what Humboldt Carré’s clients wanted. And to match the expectation, it had to perform reliably for lots of different operators, give the highest quality visuals, and, of course, be cost effective to run.

The Challenge: Designing For a Difficult Space

The Atrium is a unique historical space with a literal glass ceiling, so it came with a set of unique challenges, and fitting a large LED wall is a tricky exercise in design. The Kuchem and INFiLED team had to consider:

• Structural sensitivity: Historic spaces often come with legal restrictions  as well as limitations of load-bearing, permanent fixtures or destructive building activities like drilling. The integrity of the room architecture had to be respected. How do you fix a massive LED wall without something to fix it to?
• Variable lighting conditions: When you’re sitting in the Atrium, the walls tell you that you’re indoors, but the ceiling suggests otherwise. Natural daylight pours in from the top, risking washout, and that, together with variable artificial lighting conditions, gives any LED wall a lot to deal
• Heavy usage: That LED wall would take a beating. Its whole purpose was to draw in the bookings, so downtime wasn’t acceptable. It would need to be able to perform beautifully and reliably 24/7, 365 days a year.
• Flexibility: The more an LED wall can do, the wider the Humboldt Carré’s customer base. The 300-seat Atrium could be used for conferences, weddings and posh dinners, live events, interactive presentations – the works. It was important that the LED wall could serve as many purposes as possible.

The Solution: Taking the Load Off

Kuchem and the INFiLED team put their heads together to design a 10m x 5.5m LED Screen engineered from INFiLED’s EZ Series (now upgraded to the EZmk2 Series), fully integrated with a Novastar H2 processor (perfect for fine pitch), a Vmix PC for live content, and a K&F Vida audio system for acoustically demanding spaces.

The team worked on the architectural constraints of the Atrium as a shared design challenge, rather than a limitation. The core concept of the installation was to minimize the intrusion of the LED wall into the room, without compromising the structure of the building. An invasive conventional rigging system was out.

Instead, the team co-developed an integrated scaffolding-based structure as the main load-bearing support system. This would be non-invasive and reversible, respecting the integrity of the historic architecture of the space.

The EZ Series panel build also focussed on:

• Image quality: The first impressions given by the imposing LED wall had to be backed up with top performance. The panels are designed for performance – we’re talking a 7680Hz refresh rate for stable content, 16-bit grayscale for smooth light to dark transitions and a 10,000:1 contrast ratio for vivid, almost 3D images.
• Flexibility: the 1.95mm pixel pitch made sure the LED wall gave sharp, crisp images, both close-up and at a distance. This flexibility meant it could show different kinds of content for a wide range of events. Humboldt Carré, could maximize its use without compromising quality.
• Heat control: Under heavy use, even the most well-behaved LED wall can suddenly lose brightness and, over the long term, become unreliable and give up the ghost. The Atrium’s LED wall was optimised for thermal control, using enhanced heat sink fins to increase the surface area for better heat dissipation. This meant a well-behaved (and cost-effective) LED wall for Humboldt Carré.

The Result: Enhanced, Not Overpowered.

At 55  m2, the LED wall is currently the largest in Berlin, reinforcing the already well-established Humboldt Carré as one of the leading event venues in the city and beyond.  It’s delivering all kinds of content for all kinds of clients, which is exactly the vision. The LED wall now integrates seamlessly into the Atrium, delivering striking visuals while respecting the space’s architectural identity.

The installation was completed ahead of schedule and we’re proud that Kuchem put a lot of this down to the INFiLED team’s installation support. One of the most satisfying parts of the whole project for the INFiLED team was to be able to support our colleagues at Kuchem from concept to installation, and to be able to be at the end of a phone/email/handshake for them if they had any question, big or small.

“The installation support by INFiLED was outstanding. We finished the installation ahead of schedule.The screen looks stunning in the room, and we’ve had nothing but good feedback about it.” – Ruben Henkel, Project Manager, Kuchem.

We pride ourselves on making sure that our tech works for our clients’ goals and ambitions, and we get consistent positive feedback from our clients on our person-centred attitude to partner working. If this is how you like to work, and if you have a listed building or historic venue that needs an LED screen that works with the space, not against it, get in touch. Let’s talk through some options.