10 Years of LUME: How NYC's Most Immersive Venue Was Built from Scratch
How It Started
In 2016, Dotan Negrin took the keys to a vacant building at 393 Broadway in lower Manhattan. The building was empty. What Dotan built over the next decade became New York City's most technically advanced immersive event space: ten years, over 1,600 events, and a 16-projector 360-degree projection mapping system designed and built from scratch using Resolume, TouchDesigner, Max MSP, and computer vision.
The First Years: Art Shows and Experimentation
LUME did not start as a commercial event venue. In the beginning, Negrin produced art shows, music events, and creative gatherings at 393 Broadway, using the space to explore what was possible with light, sound, and technology. The commercial event business grew out of those early experiments as brands began to discover what was being built in Tribeca.
By 2018, the ground floor had become a working event space. By 2019, Dotan began installing the projection mapping system that would become LUME's defining competitive advantage. He built it himself, projector by projector, calibration session by calibration session, over years of hands-on iteration inside the actual space. That hands-on origin is why the team understands the system the way they do. There is no manual for how LUME works. The manual is a decade of events.
The Technology
The current system uses 16 projectors covering walls, floors, and ceilings simultaneously across 3,400 square feet on the main floor, plus 18 TVs organized in the basement lounge. The software stack runs on Resolume, TouchDesigner, and Max MSP. Every visual environment produced at LUME is built from scratch by the in-house creative team for each specific event.
The 17-speaker JBL spatial audio system creates immersive sound environments that work with the visual field rather than alongside it. The building's original tin ceilings from 1867 are still visible. The exterior marquee, modeled after classic movie theater signs, has become one of the most photographed storefronts in Tribeca and one of the most effective marketing surfaces in Lower Manhattan.
The Events
Over ten years, LUME Studios has produced events for Nike, Amazon, JetBlue, Adidas, Bai, Roku, Dropbox, Apple, Chase Bank, and Puma. Talent appearances have included Billie Eilish, Doja Cat, Burna Boy, Don Toliver, Metro Boomin, Fabolous, and 50 Cent. The Subjective Art Fair has taken over the full building annually during NFT NYC since 2022.
For agencies, this history matters for one reason: LUME has produced events for the most demanding clients in the world, at every scale and format, from 20-person executive dinners to 400-person brand activations. The brief you bring has almost certainly been executed in some form at 393 Broadway before.
The Next Ten Years
The immersive event market is growing. New venues are opening and claiming the same language LUME has used since 2016. The advantage LUME holds is not the hardware. It is the decade of hands-on production knowledge built into every system in the building and every person on the team.
See what brand activations look like at LUME Studios
Contact us: hello@lumestudios.com | (212) 203-3732
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