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24 June 2024

“For Gamestate, we pulled out all the stops”

Oh, the things a project manager comes across! Dirk Luyten spills the beans about his work on Gamestate, the giant arcade on the Keyserlei in Antwerp. “When you get started on a huge project like this, you know there will be things that seem impossible”, he says. “Then the question you need to ask yourself is: How can I make it work anyway?”

Gamestate is housed in what used to be the UGC cinema complex, close to Antwerp’s Central Station. It’s an arcade hall with a total area of 2,500 m2, making it the entertainment company’s largest location in Europe. Decorator Pieter Aebele designed the interior, and Luyten interiolizers implemented his design. “We completed this job in five weeks, and we had to pull out all the stops to make it in that time,” says Dirk Luyten.“This project was so special that even as a project manager, I had to hold my own when it came to actual manual work. You simply need that hands-on knowledge to be able to understand the finer points of the project. Just the complicated ceiling structure alone, with all those slats, was a huge project all by itself. To be exact: we incorporated 573 slats into the ceiling, hanging them from a Metal Stud support structure that we painted black. And that was necessary because the frame remains visible through the slats. No, there really wasn’t anything standard about this project!”

Giant blocks of ice

“To give you an idea of the project’s magnitude: there were 12 of us at that start-up meeting. We took measurements for a full day, on the basis of which we produced a 3D drawing, including the slats. If we hadn’t done that, if we had preferred to find out on the spot how everything should be done, that would have taken us four months. So, we needed to do it this way, and it was quite the challenge. By the way, the tables next to the benches were equally challenging – especially the Pyrasied tablets, which are only 27 mm thick. We put a plexiglass layer underneath those tablets, which can be illuminated with LED lighting. That allows light to shine through the Pyrasied top, which produces a beautiful effect. Of course, the bar is the showpiece of the arcade. The front of the bar is kitted out with angular, blue steel, which is reminiscent of giant blocks of ice. And here too, the Pyrasied marbletop is lit up via an underlying plexiglass structure. It took some doing to get this right, and all the while I kept hearing: ‘It won’t work, it’s impossible’. But that just means you maneuver, you change, and you recalculate – until it does work. When you embark on a project like this, of course there will be lots of things that don’t work, but if that’s the case, you just need to look at things differently, and wonder how you could make it work anyway.”

No regular hours

“Managing a project like this means you must let go of the idea that you’ll be working regular hours. Three out of five working days, I was on site at five in the morning to brief the 15 workers, and often I didn’t go home until six in the evening. That was just in time to make way for the painting crew, who worked until six in the morning, when it was our turn again. That’s just how it goes with projects like this. But what fun it was to be part of it all. And the grand opening was also an event to remember, what with all the famous people and influencers who were there. After all, it’s not every day you meet a movie star like Kevin Janssens.”

How about managing a non-standard project like this yourself? Go to our jobs page to apply!

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