Audio Visual engineering to support “cross-pollination of ideas” in STEM teaching.
“We don’t have separate biology and chemistry labs”
Audio Visual engineering for teaching spaces purpose-built to encourage inter-disciplinary collaboration between students.
The New Science Building at the University of East Anglia (UEA) is a £30 million inter-disciplinary facility for the sciences, including Environmental Sciences, Computing, Biology, Physics, Engineering and Chemistry and Pharmacy.
“The idea is that they are interchangeable”.
“You can have mixed faculties and swap around between subjects”.
– Neil Wilson, Senior Estates Project Manager
The building was designed with an objective – encourage “cross-pollination of ideas” i.e. provide spaces to promote collaboration between students, researchers, and staff across disciplines.
AV infrastructure, therefore, was designed and built to realise the objective:
Laboratory spaces can function as one large space to accommodate larger groups comprised of students across the disciplines.
For smaller groups, the teacher base location allows multiple options on the touch control panel to switch between the pre-programmed ‘classroom modes’.
Teaching spaces include classrooms, seminar spaces, laboratories, public areas, cafeteria, digital signage and LED installations.
Since 2012, Snelling Business Systems have partnered with UEA on campus-wide standardisation for AV deployment into classrooms.
Standardised classrooms include single-screen Panasonic projection supported by QSC speakers, room-specific Shure MXW wireless microphones and voice reinforcement for larger groups.
In addition, classrooms are equipped with Extron touch control, Wolfvision visualiser, Mersive Solstice Pod Wireless presentation/collaboration, Ampetronic hearing loop and Panasonic PTZ cameras for lecture capture. Please download our case study for the full specifications.
The rooms can be operated as one large seminar space, or split into two smaller classrooms operable independently (central partition).
The end-user can select the pre-programmed setting from either of the two control panels to ‘join’ the rooms, which enables:
The provision also exists for height-adjustable, trolley-mounted (Teammate Varilite) Panasonic 75” presentation displays to be connected at the divider location during single-use of the space.
Ten laboratory facilities exist with AV infrastructure designed to accommodate inter-disciplinary student groups in single or concurrent teaching sessions.
Additional large-format display, BYOD and audio installations are also available at smaller labs such s the ‘Tissue Culture’ and ‘Instrumentation’ labs.
Interesting? Download our casebook below for the full scheme.
The LED wall façade at the atrium is comprised of three installations, which collectively play relevant content for the building’s audience.
The main LED wall is a Full HD 3x X 2m Full HD 1.58 mm pitch installation, supported by two LED installations on each side (1220 x 1720 and 1220 x 1400).
Each LED display is equipped with:
The AV infrastructure is the UK’s largest ZeeVee ZyperUHD AVoIP deployment in higher education and the UK’s first for integration with Extron.
“Snelling Business Systems worked closely with us throughout the entire design process to give us a highly advanced AV system that fully supports our vision and requirements of students and staff at our New Science Building”.
“They worked closely with me to help translate the end-user requirements into a technological solution”.
“Their hands-on approach and personalised service meant they could easily align the AV system with the University’s key principles, in turn bringing our vision and this inspirational building to life”.
– Matt North, Learning Spaces Technology Manager, University of East Anglia
Piqued your curiosity?
Download our casebook for the full project specifications.
Have a question or two? Get in touch with us.
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