AV Best Practice Case Studies
Today, architects and audiovisual professionals are teaming up to design interior spaces that successfully merge aesthetics, functionality and technology.
These case studies represent some of the very best in terms of AV designs. These are award-winning projects as judged by architects, AV design consultants and AV systems integrators.
Best Arts AV Project
New World Center and Miami Beach Soundscape
AV Integrator: Pro Sound & Video
Photo: Courtesy New World Symphony
The $160 million New World Center in Miami Beach, home to the New World Symphony, is an audiovisual masterpiece. The concert hall features a video projection system that beams synchronized images from 14 Christie projectors onto five sound panels above and around the stage. But it's the public park outside that’s generated the most buzz. Thanks to four other 35,000-lumen Christie projectors, concert-goers outside the center can enjoy HD video and audio feeds from inside the concert hall, blended together and splashed across at 7,000 square-foot wall. To tackle the challenge of creating optimal acoustics outdoors, the team installed nearly 200 self-powered speakers from Meyer Sound on three sides of the park, including within a specially designed sculpture that resembles a ballet bar. Microphones throughout the hall pick up the sounds of the orchestra and feed them into a Meyer Constellation Acoustic System so that audio engineers can fine-tune the sound that permeates the park.
Best Corporate AV Project
Qualcomm 25th Anniversary Museum
AV Consultant: Nautilus Entertainment Design
Photo: Courtesy Showtec/Nautilus Entertainment Design
In 2010, to celebrate its 25th anniversary, telecommunications company Qualcomm wanted a museum of its own to commemorate the company's history. Nautilus Entertainment Design came up with 14 separate interactive systems to tell Qualcomm's story, each with touchscreen displays, Flash video players, and localized audio that doesn't leak sound into other areas of the museum. When building what would be called Wave Walls, designers had to make the curved walls modular enough to contain backlit panels, display cases, or video screens. The most innovative Wave Walls include displays composed of touch-enabled Christie MicroTiles. Because MicroTiles are serviced from the front, the glass touchscreen overlays had to be installed on large hinges. Each Wave Wall also hides a recessed Panaphonics overhead speaker that aims audio directly at the visitor in front of the display.
Best Education AV Project (tie)
Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery
AV Integrators: AVI Systems, R2W
[Room w/touch panel] Photo: Andy Manis
[Videowall] Photo: Alex Simionescu
The Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery was designed and built to foster a sense of community and collaboration between public and private research institutions. AV integrator AVI Systems had the job of installing audiovisual systems throughout the Institutes' workspaces, videoconferencing rooms, teaching labs, lounges, boardrooms, and more--$1.5 million worth of AV technology, all based on a Crestron DigitalMedia infrastructure. The system uses Crestron RoomView software for monitoring the AV and feeds information into the building's facility management system through a Modbus interface.
In a project separate from the building's overall AV integration, R2W built a pair of Christie MicroTiles videowalls. One is a 10x4 array with a resolution of 5496x1650; the other is a 17x2 array with a resolution of 9824x866. Each incorporates touch and gesture interactivity using lasers and infrared cameras and uses a Crestron AV2 controller and touch panel to source custom content from specially built media servers.
Best Education AV Project (tie)
University of Pennsylvania
AV Integrator: Advanced AV
Photo: Courtesy Advanced AV
When it was completed in January 2011, the videowall in the newly-constructed Translational Research Building at the University of Pennsylvania was reportedly the second-largest of its kind in the world. Advanced AV integrated 180 Christie MicroTiles into a seamless wall 9 feet high and nearly 27 feet wide. The videowall is connected to the building's fiber-optic network. High-definition Sony cameras in rooms throughout the building can capture presentations and stream them around the world or just to the new videowall. In fact, the videowall includes an integrated video camera so that faculty, students, and presenters can stand in front of it and hold live videoconferences.
Best Entertainment AV Project (tie)
WHYY Dorrance H. Hamilton Public Media Commons
AV Consultant: RJC Designs
The crown jewel of the WHYY Media Commons is the Lincoln Financial Digital Education Studio, a multifunctional space designed to host presentations, live broadcasts, performances, classes, or community events. AV consultant RJC Designs determined that the studio would need a pair of audio systems—one for speech reinforcement and another for surround-sound and other program audio. The surround-sound design, however, presented a problem. Due to the way the studio was built, there was no room to install a center-channel speaker above the 16-by-9-foot rear-projection screen. So RJC Designs worked with Community Professional to come up with a wide-dispersion center-channel loudspeaker that could hang from the studio's lighting grid, about four feet in front of the screen. RJC Designs also used the lighting grid to hold the room's 12 speech reinforcement speakers, which point down at the audience and can be controlled from an AMX touch panel to provide just the right audio coverage.
Best Entertainment AV Project (tie)
TIFF Bell Lightbox
AV Integrator: Westbury National Show Systems
Photo: Courtesy Westbury National Show Systems
The Toronto International Film Festival has become one of the most prominent film festivals in the world. Its new headquarters, the TIFF Bell Lightbox, opened in 2010 and houses cinemas, studios, a film gallery, meeting and event spaces, and more. Suspended above the building's three-story atrium is a red, glass-fronted cube that holds the venue's master control room. AV integrator Westbury National Show Systems built the room's signal distribution architecture around FOR-A 300HVS switches, a Sierra Ponderosa HD-SDI router, and Harris Corp.'s Nexio Advanced Media Platform. Audio and video travel over single and multimode fiber, feeding everything from 28 channels of digital signage, to TIFF's own in-house IPTV network.
Best Government AV Project
NASA Kennedy Space Center: Exploration Space
AV Integrator: Electrosonic
Photo: Courtesy BRC Imagination Arts
The U.S. space agency’s new Exploration Space attraction in Cape Canaveral, Fla., blends interactive exhibits and live entertainment. Guests can attempt to dock with the International Space Station or land on the moon via audiovisual kiosks integrated by Electrosonic. Throughout the day, the exhibition area turns into a theater, with a live presenter kicking off NASA's “Explorers Wanted” show, which spans several projection surfaces of varying size and shape. Electrosonic used Dataton Watchout software to ensure the projected content was mapped exactly to the differently shaped screens and didn't bleed over into the room. The Watchout system was then integrated with Medialon show-control software so that presenters can trigger the right multimedia content at just the right times.
Best Health Care AV Project
Dalhousie Medicine New Brunswick
AV Integrator: Westbury National Show Systems
Photo: Jim Clark, Westbury National Show Systems
Under the new Dalhousie Medicine New Brunswick program, medical students attend the University of New Brunswick's Saint John campus, where from one of two lecture halls they're able to participate in medical classes held in a much larger lecture hall at Dalhousie Medical School in Halifax. Sony high-definition cameras capture the action at each end, and video is transmitted between the two campuses using Tandberg C60 videoconferencing systems. In the Dalhousie, each student has a push-to-talk Clock Audio microphone at his seat. When a student pushes to talk, a Sony camera pans in her direction so that students in New Brunswick can see her speaking on a trio of 85-inch Panasonic plasma displays. To maintain audio fidelity, AV integrator Westbury National Show Systems tied together a series of BSS Audio Soundweb London digital signal processors. And to ensure these long-distance classes are never interrupted, the team specified an inordinate number of Crestron DigitalMedia audio/video ports (11 switchers in all, seven of the 32x32-port variety), overseen by a dedicated control room.
Best Hospitality AV Project
Big Al’s Bowling, Sports Bar & Arcade
AV Integrator: CompView
Photo: Gary Wilson
At Big Al’s Bowling, Sports Bar & Arcade, guests can watch one of 110 high-definition TVs, linked by cost-effective unshielded twisted-pair (UTP) cabling and fed by 60-plus Magenta Research receivers and a 64-port switcher. Or they can simply take in a game at the bar (or 12 games, thanks to 12 different AV receivers) on a 55-foot-wide, 16:9 aspect ratio Da-Lite screen. CompView was tasked with integrating all the systems without breaking the bank. Among the smart design decisions: using UTP to wire the AV equipment; working with Big Al's IT staff to run CobraNet audio and AV control on the same network as the point-of-sale, networked arcade, and other non-AV systems; and opting for serial command routing to displays instead of specifying displays with individual serial ports. CompView estimates that last decision saved the client $30,000 without sacrificing control over each display.
Best House of Worship AV Project
Palm Valley Church
AV Integrator: Mankin Media Systems
Photo: Courtesy Mankin Media Systems
The sanctuary at the Palm Valley Church in Mission, Texas, used to hold 600 worshipers—and it wasn't big enough. So when the church expanded into a newly-constructed, 2,000-seat auditorium, it brought in Makin Media Systems. It was important to the client that the auditorium be crafted to maximize sight lines between worshipers and the custom-built, 50-foot-long Da-Lite screen. When a service starts, intelligent lighting kicks in, with Martin MAC575 and MAC TW1 fixtures taking cues from a High End Systems Road Hog lighting console, while economical Nexo GEO S1210 line arrays belt out the sound. Live video from three JVC ProHD cameras—or canned content prepared by the church's staff—is fed through a Vista Spyder multiwindow processor and sent to the screen via a trio of high-brightness, 14,000-lumen Barco FLM HD14 projectors. Using a Ross Vision production switcher, church engineers can also send video and content to flat-panel TVs in the lobby, the Web, or a recording system that captures services for posterity.
Best Museum AV Project
NASCAR Hall of Fame
AV Integrator: Electrosonic
Photo: Robert Simpson
In the NASCAR Hall of Fame’s Hall of Honor, where inductees are enshrined, projection screens come together in a massive 150-foot oval above the floor showing video and imagery from an army of 16 blended Panasonic projectors. AV integrator Electrosonic had the task of configuring the 16 projectors using a Dataton Watchout production system. Because the screens were set up in an oval, and not a perfect circle, each projector had to be programmed with its own unique geometry in order to produce a seamless, blended image. In the Great Hall, an open area of historic cars and interactive exhibits, Electrosonic built a 14-by-18-foot video billboard. The hall needed a bright, high-resolution display that could compete with the ambient light in the massive room, so Electrosonic went with 252 Christie MicroTiles. Complementing the video component, Electrosonic hung a line array of JBL Professional VRX series speakers, driven by QSC Audio amplifiers, to help control the sound.
Best Restaurant/Casino AV Project
Talking Stick Resort and Casino
AV Integrator: CCS Presentation Systems
Photo: John Prouty
At Talking Stick Resort and Casino in Scottsdale, Ariz., AV design/build firm CCS Presentation Systems installed videowalls utilizing 15 103-inch Panasonic plasma displays. At one location, CCS planned to hang six of the 550-pound behemoths, only to find that the walls couldn't hold the weight. The architectural beams could, however, so CCS crafted custom-built lifts with 1-ton motors to move the suspended displays in and out of position one panel at a time. Beyond that, CCS installed more than 1,000 speakers in 38 different zones throughout the Talking Stick Resort property, driven by a Peavey MediaMatrix-based system with Altinex audio switching. AMX touch panels allow employees to fine-tune audio levels as needed.
Best Retail AV Project
Versace Fifth Avenue
AV Integrator: McCann Systems
Photo: Christopher Ludwig
High-end retailer Versace wanted to rent a couple flat-screen video displays for its store windows on New York's Fifth Avenue during Fashion Week 2010. Rather than rent them run-of-the-mill plasma or LCD displays, AV integrator McCann Systems suggested custom displays built with modular Christie MicroTiles. The displays were three tiles wide by 10 tiles high, or roughly 4-by-10 feet, and ran Versace's own video content, mapped to the wall's vertical aspect ratio. Each display hid a computer that fed content to the videowalls' controllers, which in turn mapped each wall's 30 tiles and determined the best resolution for running the Versace video, making brightness, contrast, and color adjustments on the fly. When Fashion Week ended McCann Systems disassembled the walls and used the modules for other projects.
PRO AV Spotlight Judges' Award
Rio Tinto CBD Mine
Architect/Interior Design: The Buchan Group
AV Integrator: Haycom AV
Photo: Christian Bowman
Last November, Rio Tinto, an international mining company, hosted a year-end party at the Customs House in the Australian city of Brisbane. The Buchan Group was hired to turn the Customs House into a visually spectacular venue without disturbing the interior of the 122-year-old heritage site. Along with integrator Haycom AV, the Buchan Group used conventional Christie Roadster HD12K projectors in unconventional ways, namely to “paint” the architecturally ornate and curved walls of the Custom House with specially designed 2D and 3D imagery. The result was a dynamic, 31-by-110-foot canvas of projected imagery. And because revelers were so close to the images that were mapped to the room's walls, everything was programmed for a high-resolution, 3840x1080-pixel video stream.
PRO AV Spotlight Judges' Award
Expo 2010 Shanghai, U.S.A. Pavilion
AV Integrator: Electrosonic
Photo: Robert Simpson
At Expo 2010 in Shanghai, China, the highlight of the U.S.A. Pavilion was an audiovisual experience that highlighted the American spirit. Visitors seated on theater benches watched what producers called “The Garden,” a multimedia presentation about a young girl who dreamed of turning a vacant lot into a lush garden. The show emanated from five Panasonic PT-DW10000 projectors and displayed on five 30-foot-high Harkness projection screens, each in portrait mode and custom-cut into unique shapes. All around the screens were LED light frames that were programmed to change colors to fit mood of the show. A Medialon show controller issued 833 lighting cues in the eight-minute show. The show itself featured live-action and computer-generated imagery, as well as 4D effects, including mist and seats that vibrated.
