Queen Elisabeth Hall

Antwerp’s Queen Elisabeth Hall (Koningin Elisabethzaal) is the resident venue for The Royal Flemish Philharmonic Orchestra, and one of the major cultural centres in Belgium. In addition to its primary orchestral use the venue can also accommodate contemporary music, opera, dance, musical theatre and conferences.

Opened at the end of 2016, the hall was designed by Manchester-based architects Simpson Haugh & Partners, with acoustics masterminded by Kirkegaard Associates. London based consultants Charcoal Blue designed the technical installation, with Van Damme the cable of choice.

The installation itself was awarded to Benelux Van Damme distributor FACE, whose team of 12 were on site for the whole of 2016. The project used more than 12 kilometres of Van Damme Purple Series Digilog digital/analogue audio multicores, 8 kilometres of Van Damme 2.50 and 4.00 mm Ecoflex speaker cables and a staggering 22 kilometres of Van Damme Serial DV low loss digital coax.

FACE Project Manager Steven Kemland said: “We installed an impressive length of audio and lighting cable, adding up to over 100 kilometres in the main venue alone. We used all low smoke halogen-free Van Damme cable, making this the first venue in Belgium using this kind of cabling, incorporating 180 connection boxes (with a specific design for each of them) in the building. The whole network includes Cat6 cabling for the audio network, cue lights, DMX and intercom, making the whole installation future-proof – and each element in the configuration has its specific cable colour.”