Florence celebrated a historic double anniversary in 2014 of the city's booming industrial economy: 60 years since the gas supplier ENI purchased an old iron foundry, saving the factory from closure and enshrining the birth of Nuovo Pignone in 1954, and 20 years after the acquisition of Nuovo Pignone by General Electric in 1994 to create GE Oil & Gas, the leading manufacturer of gas turbines and compressors. The celebration of these anniversaries took place at the Stazione Leopolda in Florence, Italy with prime minister Matteo Renzi in attendance where he and highly influential members of the technology industry and the general public could see exhibits of photos of the companies' history and displays of their innovative technologies, past and present. Although beautiful and renown for its industrial architecture, the vast, old train station produces a significant amount of noise reverberation so event organisers Mediacross teamed up K-array to deliver an audio solution to confront these challenges.
One of the displays included an impressive 3D hologram of a new generation turbine created by the MMG Multimedia Meeting Group that was accompanied by hanging two portable Pinnacle-KR402 systems that included clusters of four Python-KP102 line arrays paired with two Thunder-KMT21 subwoofers per side. An Anakonda-KAN200+ further supported the video projection.
MMG hailed the K-array systems for their easy, plug and play set up as well as the quality of sound. eVideo was also a constant element of the display layout throughout the venue; either with an informational and communicative purpose. An Anakonda-KAN200+, two portable Pinnacle-KR402 systems and a KO70 supported this impressive space of the exhibition and were setup throughout the hall. In the 300 seat auditorium where panel discussions and presentations took place, K-array installed two Pinnacle-KR402 portable systems along the length of the seated audience and a KO70 as an additional sub. The client's initial concerns were met due to the intelligent design of the loudspeakers and event organizers were happy with the audio performance.
