NewBay Media has announced the winners of the 6th Annual Pro AV Spotlight Awards, awarded in cooperation with InfoComm International. Chosen from entries received in nine categories, the Pro AV Spotlight Awards honor installations across the breadth of AV vertical markets.
“We received a very high level of submissions, and it was wonderful to see how AV has become so deeply integrated into the work that organizations do,” says Cynthia Wisehart, editor of Pro AV Today and Sound & Video Contractor. “We saw remarkable examples of how AV is used as key infrastructure for collaboration and productivity—going far beyond what a traditional IT network can provide to support creativity, research, and commerce. We also saw that the use of AV for high-impact communications is breaking new ground. Architects and designers are truly taking advantage of modern displays and the advances in resolution, interactivity, flexibility, and energy use. On the audio side, we saw how intelligibility and detail literally transform the way people experience communication and music. Thank you to everyone who participated and congratulations to this year’s winners.”
The following installations were honored for technical design, innovation, and how instrumental they were to their clients’ missions. These winning installations stand out as powerful examples of the essential role of AV in business, ministry, and the advancement of culture, education, health and public service. For more details on these installations look for the upcoming July issue of Sound & Video Contractor.
BEST CORPORATE AV PROJECT:
Winner:
GE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE CENTER
Markham, Ontario, Canada
Advanced for GE Energy
Located at GE Digital Energy’s new $50 million, 200,000 square-foot headquarters, the Experience Center is an immersive, museum-like environment that educates GE’s customers and partners on digital energy products and solutions through interactive touchscreens, kiosks and a 58ft. 180-degree curved Prysm LPD videowall.
BEST EDUCATION AV PROJECT:
Winner:
NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY VISITOR CENTER
Boston, Massachusetts
Whitlock with Cavanaugh Tocci Associates for Northeastern University
Life-size, high-resolution, multi-touch surfaces add spectacular interactive dimension to the lobby of the new visitor center at Boston’s Northeastern University. Featuring three large-scale interactive display areas, it is an engaging high-tech, high-touch space for the 70,000 potential students and family members who visit each year.
BEST HEALTHCARE AV PROJECT:
Winner:
GOODMAN HALL at IU HEALTH NEUROSCIENCE CENTER
Indianapolis, Indiana
Sensory Technologies for Indiana University (IU) Health
Goodman Hall is a multi-level, 270,000-square-foot clinical outpatient and imaging facility with an auditorium, boardroom, divisible training/conference rooms, collaboration space, and observation rooms. The solution includes extensive Cisco telepresence, as well as full-time technical support and asset management and tracking.
BEST GOVERNMENT AV PROJECT:
Winner:
SANTA BARBARA EMERGENCY OPERATIONS CENTER,
AUDIO, DATA, AND VISUAL INFORMATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
Santa Barbara, California
Electrosonic for County of Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara County went from a 1,600-square-foot trailer with a projector and a small TV to a new 11,000-square-foot building with integrated information sharing from various internal and external sources, including news media, incident maps from geo-spatial services, live video streams from a county helicopter, and operational reports.
BEST ENTERTAINMENT/ARTS AV PROJECT:
Winner:
SFJAZZ CENTER at ROBERT N. MINER AUDITORIUM
Berkeley, California
Auerbach Pollack Friedlander, BBI Engineering, SIA Acoustics for SFJAZZ
SFJAZZ Center is the new home of SFJAZZ, one of world’s preeminent organizations promoting jazz performance and education. The purpose of the audio system was to provide uniform, high-quality sound reinforcement for performances, recording, and broadcast in a small flexible auditorium that seats 350 to 700 people.
BEST HOSPITALITY/RESTAURANT AV PROJECT:
Winner:
COMAL RESTAURANT ACOUSTIC SYSTEM
Berkeley, California
Meyer Sound and BugID for Comal Restaurant
This is the first installation in the world to use Meyer Sound’s Constellation acoustic system to flexibly adjust the acoustical ambience of dining spaces. Patrons experience an ideal balance of “lively buzz” and the ability to converse comfortably without excessive background noise. Constellation achieves this by picking up ambient sounds from the room using dispersed ceiling microphones, processing the sounds in real time, and re-distributing the sound using a large number of small, self-powered loudspeakers.
BEST MUSEUM AV PROJECT:
Winner:
THE VIEW FROM THE SHARD
London
Dataton, DJ Willrich, Event Communications, Mirage Associates for The View from The Shard
The 72-story skyscraper known as The Shard was inaugurated in July of 2012; The View from The Shard visitor attraction enables Londoners and tourists to enjoy 360-degree vistas from 800 feet above London—almost twice the height of any other viewing platform in the city. The AV system entertains and educates, as well as delivering digital signage information for ticketing and for corporate events.
BEST WORSHIP AV PROJECT:
Winner:
CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY OF GREATER CINCINNATI
Florence, Kentucky
AV Systems Department, Church of Scientology Int’l
A simple-to-use AV network connects 30 locations throughout the building presenting information, video, and meeting support for various spiritual, outreach, and charitable activities for church members and the general public. All locations including the Grand Chapel, Seminar rooms and Public Information Displays can all be updated from the central server.
JUDGES’ AWARD:
Stony Brook University Reality Deck
Stony Brook, New York
- Synnex
- After a decade of conceptual design by SBU, the Reality Deck is the world’s first 1.5 billion pixel immersive display, comprised of 416 tiled high-resolution LCD monitors in a four-wall surround layout. The pixel density is sufficiently high to saturate the resolving capabilities of the human eye over a very large working area, providing unique visualization platform for large-scale scientific data visualization and for research into novel user interaction methods.
