The new Doltone House event space at Darling Island Wharf pioneers a combination of classic design, environmentally conscious construction and cutting edge technology.  

Located on the waterfront of Sydney Harbour, Doltone House’s new Darling Island Wharf venue  consists of an 800-seat capacity event centre, intimate boardrooms, a food emporium, café and live ‘open kitchen’.  

A combination of elegant design and social responsibility, Doltone House Darling Island Wharf features a timeless aesthetic appeal and innovative functional diversity. Clean lines and finishes are balanced with environmentally friendly materials and advanced audio-visual technology. The result is a modern, sophisticated venue that demonstrates a green approach to design, construction, materials and operation, setting the benchmark for environmentally sustainable buildings.

The acoustic-inlaid, operable doors in the event centre can be manipulated to redesign the space in a plethora of different layouts, transforming the building into an architectural Rubik’s cube. The warm, neutral colour palette employed throughout the site and glass facades allow the iconic Sydney Harbour to take centre stage.

Crafted by a series of experts in sustainability, the building has been recognised as the first six-star green rated building in New South Wales and only the second building in Australia to receive the prestigious sustainability rating.

With an 800-seat capacity event centre that includes boardrooms, a food emporium with cafe’s and a live open kitchen, Doltone House owners - the Signorelli family - employed the services of leading electrical, energy and lighting design consultants Haron Robson to assist in reducing the venue’s greenhouse gas emissions and energy usage.

Haron Robson helped assist the venue reduce its energy consumption by approximatley 20 per cent, through a combination of environmentally conscious designs and cutting edge technology, including the implementation of a peak-demand tri-generation plant,  electrical sub-metering systems,  use of natural light and intelligent lighting control systems including daylight sensors.

Commenting on the project, Glen Haron, Managing Director of Haron Robson said, “Details such as intelligent lighting control with occupancy sensing and engaging natural light has significantly reduced energy use normally associated with venues of this scale”.
“The tri-generation plant manages the venue’s energy load effectively, while maintaining the highest efficiencies to ensure that each event’s carbon footprint is minimised,” he added.

To meet the venue’s design criterion, Haron Robson installed state-of the-art electrical technologies for lighting sounds and audio-visual requirements. Haron Robson created an in-house visual and lighting system to facilitate meetings, conferences and receptions. Low voltage spotlights and efficient LED lights were installed and integrated with separate activation systems to feature time controls.  

Glen concluded, “Energy reduction is a significant factor in being green and Doltone House Darling Island Wharf have tackled this issue head-on. Large function venues can consume substantial power levels in their daily operations, however the owners are determined to lower Doltone’s carbon footprint”.

In house AV suppliers Microhire are delighted with the venue in particular the Show Technology products that meet Haron Robson's specifications: eighty Pro Shop LED MultiPAR Tri-Colour wash fittings, twenty Martin smartMACs and a MA Lighting grandMA ultra-light control console.

“The venue had a number of elements that needed to be taken into account when the lighting system was specified,” explained Nick Blaxell, Microhire’s Business Development & Venue Services Manager. “One of which was that it is the first 6-star green-star venue in NSW and so all the lighting had to be of low power consumption with the longest possible lamp life that you can get. However, you could not compromise the quality of event that could be produced in the venue. Consequently the designer’s specified LED for static lighting and the Martin smartMAC was identified as the lowest power consuming moving light available. Of course, it also carries the quality of Martin behind it too.

”If you happen to draw more power than is allocated for your production the system will automatically shut down other areas in the building in order to give AV production more power.”

Another important factor to be considered when designing the lighting system is that the ceiling is quite low – only 3.1 metres high. Noise from moving lights could have been a problem but fortunately the smartMACs do not use fans rather they have a heat sync built into them for heat dispersion. The LED MultiPARs, like all LD lighting, run cool and produce no heat.

“We went with the TriColor simply because of the better blend of the RGB LEDs before they hit th lens,” said Nick. “Again being an intimate ceiling height you really want a colour blend that is done very quickly so that you don’t get the RGB broken up before you achieve the required colour. We put eighty in because the capacity of the venue is roughly eighty oval tables so we use them in a table wash configuration.”

The smartMACs were specified by Haron Robson and Nick fully agrees with the choice citing functionality, gobo sets, and colour mixing abilities as exactly what is required for the venue.

”The key positives for us is that it is a turnkey system with enough flexibilty for the type of events we’re doing on a daily basis,” said Nick. “As with all our jobs, we use a grandMA console so we only have to plug in the grandMA ultra-light, call up a few fixtures and programme a few scenes – including anything specific to the client’s brief – and away we go. Sometimes we have to physically refocus the LED MultiPARs to suit table placement or maybe we’ll use them as a wall or roof wash.

Show Technology