About This Project
The Qatar Peninsula has an ancestral legacy that goes back to the beginning of mankind’s history. One of its first denominations was ‘Catara’, and this word serves as a tribute in the name of the project Katara Cultural Village. It is a large tourist village for cultural exchange that has theatres, concert halls, exhibition galleries and cultural facilities to enhance the heritage and traditions of Qatar.
Katara Hills Gardens are part of this great project. With more than 600,000 square meters, they have plants and trees from different countries and continents that reflect an oasis of cultures to celebrate art, creativity and talent.
These gardens opened to the public during the summer of 2019, and also have sports paths and outdoor recreational areas. To provide these large open spaces with a reliable public address and voice evacuation system, Katara Hills managers have relied on LDA Audio Tech and its EN 54 certified systems.
These were the needs for this installation:
- Provide maximum audio coverage at comfortable levels for walkers and users.
- Ensure uniform distribution of music and announcements over the entire park, to face the challenges of both topography and wind, with different heights and high wind speeds during certain year periods.
- Provide security and reliability to the system, so that it can function correctly in any situation, especially in case of emergency.
To meet the requirements of the park, LDA Audio Tech conducted an acoustic study with EASE software including a complete simulation of all the areas to be covered. This allowed identifying the key points according to the topographic and environmental characteristics of the terrain, in order to design the most suitable audio system.
LDA Audio Tech configured an installation with 8 different audio zones that work centrally through a NEO-8060 main controller EN 54-16 certified, and which provides all the advanced management, security and maintenance features that Katara Hills park needs.
NEO is operated from a workstation as a distributed audio system through a network interface fully compatible with Dante standard.
In addition to the main unit, the systems installed by LDA in Katara Hills include:
For the speakers’ configuration, we have chosen the Renkus-Heinz ICL-F-Dual-RD-WR digitally steerable line array loudspeakers, which form up to eight separate beams which cover all angles and reach a distance of 30 meters with full bandwidth (80 Hz – 20 kHz) and a sound pressure level (SPL) of 105 dB.
The speakers have been customized with RAL 8016 colour to blend with the appearance of the trees and achieve full integration with the landscape.
LDA Audio Tech has a very consolidated presence in Qatar and throughout the Middle East, where it usually develops large public address and voice evacuation projects, such as the Qatar Foundation, the International American School of Jeddah, the leisure park Al Montazah, the heritage project Heart of Sharjah, the King Abdulaziz University (KAU) or the Sultan Qaboos youth sports complex.
(Pictures: Own & Bruce Baker / CC0 BY 2.0)
