Throughout 2022-2023 City, University of London underwent extensive renovations of its Finsbury Square building, part of Bayes Business School, one of the top UK business schools with programmes ranging from undergraduates to masters, MBA, PhD and executive education.
The refurbishment of Finsbury Square had come as part of a general upgrade programme for the Bayes in order to meet the popular demand of its world-class courses. The challenge was navigating an aggressive refurbishment schedule in the heart of London while students still worked from various floors throughout the refurbishments. In addition, there were varying requirements for different room types based on teaching methods; from exclusively hybrid teaching and in-person lecture theatres through to PC labs and meeting rooms. Each room had to maintain high standards of teaching which included ergonomic viewing angles to screens for all students as well as hitting the target student numbers in each space.
TeamMate was given the opportunity to work with City’s Project Managers, Architects Rivington Street Studio and AV integrator Aura (formerly Reflex AV) throughout the design process. Products from TeamMate’s diverse portfolio of designs were explored for various teaching spaces. Particular attention was paid to the materials and colour options to ensure the furniture matched not only the aesthetics of the building but also kept up with the high standard of one of the UK’s top business schools.
Over the course of 9 months, TeamMate shipped and installed AV furniture solutions for a range of meeting and teaching rooms across the site. For the many ‘Syndicate’ Meeting Rooms – 6, 8 & 10 seat WorksZone VariHite Tables were deployed with a consistent colour pallet which included a Blackend Legno finish worktop and black metalwork. For the General Meeting Rooms, TeamMate’s Kobi tables were used due to their scalability and were again finished with a similar colour pallet to the WorksZones. Both sets of tables used Crestron Cable Retractors and were able to accommodate these within the metalwork structure to provide fully secure cable containment.
In addition to meeting rooms, there were various requirements for PC and BYOD (bring your own devices) labs. TeamMate put forward the Kobi PC Desk and standard Kobi tables for these spaces as well as their new electric height-adjusting Pop-up PC Desks for one of the teaching spaces which required both BOYD and PC working requirements. All solutions enabled AV containment and easy access for integration and ongoing maintenance. Specifically, the Kobi Tables utilised the AV Nook which acted as a rack-mounted power solution and allowed the power provision to sit inside, instead of under the floor in case of any future problems.
Furthermore, TeamMate’s Screen Riser which was chosen for the top floor due to the ability to retract the screen when not in use to allow natural light from the ceiling to floor windows to flood the room. Also, Evolve Screen Dividers were set up in the Social Learning Spaces to help break up the room but also enable connectivity to cast users’ devices.
Finsbury Square’s refurbishment programme had significant logistical and delivery challenges but was met with meticulous planning and organisation from all parties involved.
The result now means City, University of London has world-class teaching and meeting spaces for attracting the next generation of students to Bayes Business School.
Guido de Koning, Associate Project Manager, Property & Facilities at City said ‘Working against a challenging timeline, TeamMate were able to step up to the plate and work closely with City and the Principal Contractor to ensure flexible arrangements were in place to work around and with other trades to ensure the installation was kept on track’.
Arran Rees, Project Manager at Aura commented, ‘Working with TeamMate as always was a pleasure. Both the people in Wallingford and the onsite team worked with great care and attention to detail, working seamlessly alongside our AV install team. Any issues that arose during this massive project were dealt with quickly and professionally.’
It was an absolute pleasure working with TeamMate on one of the biggest and most challenging projects I’ve ever been part of. Diligent coordination, good communication, attention to detail and a can-do attitude from everyone involved meant the installation and commissioning went very smoothly.
Mike Sadler, Audio Visual Infastructure and Development Manager
City, University of London
