![[story-seed] venue in show state](/_next/image?url=%2Fapi%2Fmedia%2Ffile%2Fstory-hall.webp&w=3840&q=100)
Meridian Awards Gala
A 60-tonne hangar door, cued like a curtain.
- Client
- Meridian Foundation
- Event type
- Gala & Ceremony
- Year
- 2025
- Location
- Algiers, Algeria
- Format
- On site
Give an engineering prize an engineering room — and make six hundred people in evening dress feel at home in it.
The foundation wanted out of hotel ballrooms. The shipyard offered the scale and the honesty; we had to supply the warmth, the acoustics and a dinner service that worked between crane rails.
- Client
- Meridian Foundation
- Event type
- Gala & Ceremony
- Year
- 2025
- Location
- Algiers, Algeria
- Date
- 5 December 2025
- Format
- On site
- Audience
- 500 – 2 000
- Services
- Scenography, Technical Production, Brand Experience
- Deliverables
- Ceremony scenography, Travelling light rig, Show calling
- Seated
- 600 guests
A ceremony that feels engineered, not decorated. And one moment nobody films well enough to spoil for next year.
The hangar door is the moment.
At the final award, the 60-tonne door opens on cue — six metres a minute, timed to the score — and the harbour becomes the backdrop.
![[story-seed] venue in show state](/_next/image?url=%2Fapi%2Fmedia%2Ffile%2Fstory-hall.webp&w=3840&q=85)
Three acts between crane rails
Dinner
Warm light pooled on the tables; the hangar kept its shadows and its scale.
![[story-seed] stage seen from the gantry](/_next/image?url=%2Fapi%2Fmedia%2Ffile%2Fstory-gantry.webp&w=3840&q=85)
Awards
The 40-metre travelling rig walked the light from table to stage for each laureate.
![[story-seed] closing night crowd](/_next/image?url=%2Fapi%2Fmedia%2Ffile%2Fstory-closing.webp&w=3840&q=85)
The door
On the final award the hangar door opened to the harbour. Nobody filmed it well enough.
What we delivered
- Dinner layout between crane rails
- Acoustic sails over the tables
- Stage and laureate walk
- Travelling light rig on the crane track
- The hangar door integrated into show control
- Score, light and door on one timeline
- A rehearsal with the yard’s own operators
![[story-seed] crew and console](/_next/image?url=%2Fapi%2Fmedia%2Ffile%2Fstory-crew.webp&w=3840&q=85)
Working hangar, ceremony room
Same bay, six days apart.
![[story-seed] bare venue before build](/_next/image?url=%2Fapi%2Fmedia%2Ffile%2Fstory-bare.webp&w=3840&q=85)
Quay to curtain call
![[story-seed] flagship facade at dusk](/_next/image?url=%2Fapi%2Fmedia%2Ffile%2Fstory-facade.webp&w=3840&q=85)
ArrivalGuests walk the quay, cranes lit above.
- Dinner
Warm pools in an honest room.
- Awards
The rig walks with each laureate.
- The door
The harbour, revealed.
Engineered, not decorated
- 01Table numbers milled from hull plate offcuts.
- 02The door operator, on headset, cue 19.
- 03The travelling rig on its crane track.
- 04Acoustic sails, invisible from the tables.
Six days in the yard
Negotiating the room
Two months with the yard: which bay, which week, which crane track we could borrow.
J-60Acoustics first
The sails were designed before the light: a hangar you cannot hear a speech in is just a hangar.
J-30Door rehearsal
The yard’s operators ran the door to the score four times before we ever seated a guest.
J-2Show night
Nineteen cues, one of them 60 tonnes.
1 nightThe hangar, annotated
Click a numbered marker to explore a detail. Use arrow keys to move between markers.
Forty metres of light on the yard’s own crane track.
Speech intelligibility in a steel box, without hiding the steel.
Sixty tonnes, cue 19, six metres a minute.
Our laureates build ports and bridges. For one evening, the room was worthy of them.
- 600
- Seated guests
- 60t
- Reveal curtainThe hangar door, on cue.
- 19
- CuesScore, light and door on one timeline.
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Every city has rooms like this. Most of them are waiting for a reason.
