Owned by the Corporation of the Church House, and designed by renowned architect Sir Herbert Baker in 1939, the building serves as the headquarters of the Church of England. When the general synod is not in session it is let for corporate banquets, conferences and seminars.
The original, fixed tiered seating has been removed and replaced with a level floor; this gives the hall much more versatility and the ability to cater for theatre style conferences and meetings for up to 664, and gala dinners and banquets for up to 372.
Technical consultant, Nigel Luby was first approached by The Conference Centre's technical supervisor Ben Pain in 2005 to carry out an acoustic analysis. This duly led to his company AVSYS.DC completely renewing the AV system in the main Assembly Hall (and four smaller rooms), placing them all on a single network.
The acoustics specialist has built plenty of headroom into the cabling infrastructure to cater for future growth and the requirements of other production companies and broadcasters using the venue. At the same time he has ensured the system interfaces with the venue's broadcast studio and the IT network.
Nigel Luby was indebted to the help provided by Fuzion, in advising on a ribbon driver delayed solution around the perimeter of the balcony area using Radia Pro drivers. Sister company Kelsey Acoustics, meanwhile, supplied all the cabling, including 370 lines of Starquad analogue cable, SP/DIF digital audio tie lines, digital coax video and BBC-spec triax cable. The whole system is run bi-directional.
At the Church House Nigel Luby's principle concern was the potential for reverberation under a glass-domed roof once the fixed raked seating had been sacrificed in favour of flattened floor. "I knew that the creation of two parallel surfaces would increase the potential for flutter echo," he said. The fact that the loudspeakers needed to be architecturally-discreet provided further pressure.
(Jim Evans)
