This was designed by David Chesal, whose brief was to bring a completely unique look but with a similar signature style and flair to the independently owned venue following his highly successful lighting at the Penthouse Club in Reno in 2011.

Working closely with Penthouse SF owner Joe Carouba, local architect Gary Henderson of Collins-Henderson Inc. and installer Karl Keislich from Sound Stage Systems, David also completely re-designed the interior space, formally the Broadway Showgirls Club, bringing it in line with the slick modern marque of the Penthouse global brand.

The Club covers around 15,000 square feet split over two levels, and is divided into several different areas including the main room and ‘ultra lounge’, main bar, hallway, a series of dining booths, two stages, a second floor bar, VIP Rooms, Dance Stations, Skybox, elevators, the bathrooms and entrance / lobby. No area is unlit!

The lighting experience starts outside the building with Anolis ArcPad 48 wash fixtures shooting up the walls and the doorway delineated with ArcSource 1 cool whites, immediately identifying it from its surroundings.

A full range of Anolis fixtures is utilised throughout the club – ArcSource, ArcLine, ArcLink, ArcPAR and ArcPad.

Anolis was selected for its wide and dynamic range of fixtures, their high quality European-manufactured specs, and also because of the ability to customise certain fixtures according to the precise needs of the design.

Special features include a very smart Champagne Display.

This is lit to highlight the feature itself and also to reveal the huge opening in the celling and enable people to see how to access the second level – for which a large section of existing wall was removed. Proper architectural lighting was chosen to bring the impressive display ‘alive’, created using eight Anolis ArcLine Optic 24 smart whites with 25 x 6 degree lenses. The light grazes up the front of the bottle labels, in a colour temperature specially tweaked to produce a perfect tone for showing off this effective art-work.

The Main Stage lighting rig comprises six Robe ROBIN 300 Plasma Spots – chosen for their CRI of 94 - perfect for flesh tones, and also for their 10,000 hours of lamp life. For washing the stage are five Robe LEDForce 18 RGBWs and upstage are four Robe Scan 250 XTs, seven LEDForce 7 RGBWs and an Austrian drape, lit with Anolis ArcLink Optic 4 RGBAs.

Two Robe DigitalSpot 3500 DTs are used to project onto the very back wall of the stage and its metal bead curtain. These are also used to produce versatile ‘room decoration’ elsewhere, like on a lattice feature wall, the chef’s table and the ‘tapas bar’ area.

David sums up, “The overall lighting of the environment has an incredible all-over encompassing effect, helping to make all the spaces look interesting and intimate and everyone in them feel comfortable and relaxed”.