The Eye 2015

At the beginning of the year, Stageco Belgium shipped seven containers of equipment to Kuwait City in preparation for the official March 4th 2015 opening of Shuhada Park’s new Green Belt Gar­den, attended by the 5th Emir of Kuwait, Sabah IV Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah GCB, the Crown Prince and other digni­taries. The production of the event – which included a wealth of water, fire, lighting and laser effects – was run by fellow Belgian company Laser System Europe (LSE), which hired Stageco Belgium to provide the structures. A custom structure using Stageco’s steel 750 tower system benefited from the company’s design experience and equipment previously seen in the form of the Giant Arch for Pink Floyd’s 1994 world tour and the Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. The structure featured two 20m wide x 16m high ovals connected together by truss links to form an ‘eye’. The first oval contained pyro and lighting fixtures while the second housed a water curtain and fountains. A basin was built at the bottom of the ovals to collect the water. Other work included the building of scaffolding structures for LED video screens. Antonio Duarte Da Cruz headed a Stageco crew of eight and all agreed on how unique this event was. In fact, preparations began in 2013 but the project was rescheduled three times until Stageco Belgium finally received the go ahead at the end of 2014. Stageco’s crew reportedly did a fine job on-site, solving the challenge of fitting the one metre pieces and trapezi­um-shaped items together perfectly. This was no mean feat as there is less margin for error with this design than with Stage­co’s regular stages. It was yet another memorable and very special project to add to the company’s history book of technical achievements.