The new Aarhus School of Architecture in Denmark, equipped to educate future architects in aural as well as visual elements of contemporary building design, includes a Meyer Sound Constellation acoustic system in its main auditorium that’s designed to allow students to directly experience the acoustic response of various room designs.
Prior to construction of the new campus, the school’s learning facilities were spread out across the city of Aarhus in nine separate locations. The new four-story main campus building brings together all nine addresses under one roof and leverages AV technologies, Constellation among them, to provide more optimum classroom communication and remote learning opportunities. The school’s investment in AV was made possible by funding from the A.P. Møller and Chastine Mc-Kinney Møller Foundation.
Consultancy and integration firm Stouenborg was tasked with the design, engineering, and installation of all AV systems at the school, with Anders Jørgensen serving as project manager. According to Jørgensen, one of the principal goals was to make sure leading technology was applied to enhance communication and not impose annoying hinderances. An example is the acoustical flexibility afforded by Constellation, a system of active acoustics comprising 13 D-Mitri network platform modules along with 71 small full-range loudspeakers and 14 compact subwoofers.
“Here we have a large auditorium that often functions as a lecture hall,” says Jørgensen, “and with Constellation we can create a teaching environment that is optimized for effortless two-way communication. It breaks the natural flow of a presentation when you must pass a wireless microphone around for student questions. With Constellation’s voice lift and Q&A feature, you have clear two-way communication, just as if you were in a small classroom.”
Aarhus School of Architecture prorector Kristine Leth Juul says of the technology, “It supports the idea that lectures can be dialogue-based, where it becomes easy to ask questions. Students can feel safer to ask questions, giving them more courage to get involved and even stimulate lively debates it creates more equality in the space.”
A smaller learning environment, dubbed didaktek (from the Greek roots of “teach” and “technology”) provides a different flavor of learning experience with projection screens on all four walls. Each screen is paired with a Meyer Sound ULTRA-X40 loudspeaker that localizes the sound source to the active screen. If desired, sound can be panned from screen to screen, or even moved spatially in the room using Meyer Sound’s iPad-based Spacemap Go spatial sound design and mixing tool. Two USW-210P subwoofers extend bandwidth as needed for low-frequency impact.
If desired, a moveable partition between the auditorium and didaktek can be pulled back to form an open space with seating space for as many as 400. The Constellation system has settings that enable the two rooms to also blend as a single coherent acoustical response.
“It’s clear that the potential for use of these rooms is far wider than we expected because the flexibility and acoustics are so good,” says Leth Juul. “This means staff members can experiment and take full advantage of each system’s possibilities. I expect this will be broadly inspiring, not only for our own students but also for the many guests and international architects who come to visit.”
Seven smaller rooms are each outfitted with two Meyer Sound UP-4slim loudspeakers. “These rooms are often used for streaming presentations or interactive seminars on Zoom or other platforms,” Jørgensen notes. “Since the remote voice microphone pickup can vary widely, high intelligibility in the room was vital. With the UP-4slims we have an STI [speech transmission index] rating between 0.83–0.92.”
