The new University of Bath School of Management now has a brand new building that enables all School of Management’s students and academic staff to be together under one roof for the first time. The building has been designed to enable flexibility, transparency, and collaboration amongst all users whilst utilising the latest technology in academic and social spaces.
TeamMate, together with Pure AV worked with the university’s AV team as well as the building’s architects to put together a package of technical roomware solutions for a mixture of Auditoriums, Lecture Theatres, Seminar Rooms & Social Spaces. The key theme of the project meant that all designs had to ensure a constant and straightforward user experience. Furthermore, there was a requirement for the teaching lecterns to match the aesthetics of the wood paneling used throughout the building and for a bespoke conference podium that could be wheeled out when events are taking place.
The project made for a challenging but unique bespoke design based on TeamMate’s Educator lectern range for all the teaching venues as well as Totem stands for the social spaces. Each design ensured that there was consistency between the variations of product so users could go into any space and know how the system would work.
Conference Theatre:
TeamMate designed a bespoke standalone podium that could be wheeled out for conferences, this design incorporated precision-cut wooden batons to form a tulip design that made an impression whilst matching the wooden exterior of the theatre. A carefully managed design still enabled users to remove the panels to gain access for any integration or maintenance.
In addition, there was also a main 4.25m custom-made Educator VariHite Double Desk lectern. This was designed to be split into two halves for installation purposes, the exterior of the desk used a flexible wood veneer wrap in Steamed Beech which can be applied to any Educator 3 lectern.
Harvard, Flat & Tiered Lecture Theatres:
Each of these spaces used an Educator Desk VariHite desk which had a 2.2m worktop. This provided enough space for the Crestron control panel, Beyerdynamic microphone, dual monitor arm, and two WolfVision VZ3-Neo UHD Visualisers. TeamMate also embedded a ceramic TK team writing surface with a custom metal bezel into the worktop. These desks also had the wood veneer Steamed Beech wrap on the exterior of the lectern.
Seminar Room & PC Lab:
A smaller Educator Single VariHite with a wooden veneer exterior was also installed.
Social Spaces:
For a mobile trolley, TeamMate and Pure AV put forward the Totem Mobile stand – equipped with a large display and interface panel for a powerbar module.
All lecterns matched as close as possible to the aesthetics of the teaching spaces, giving the impression of consistency between the interior finishes and furniture. The design of using a wood veneer finish enables the lecterns to use the properties of a metal construction but also has the soft finish and look that comes with using a wooden veneer.
Rob Hyde, AV Manager at the University of Bath said, ‘The feedback so far from the staff has been very positive about their experience of using the space. It was designed to bring all of the School of Management together into one place, it is also actually giving us a set of standards that we can apply going forward.’
Rohan Surana, Operations Manager at the University of Bath also commented, ‘The lecture theatres and the audiovisual equipment offers an excellent in-person, a hybrid, or a completely remote teaching experience and it will allow, in due course for us to cater to participants across a number of regions, a number of countries, or even bring together participants from across industry into one single unified platform.’
TeamMate have been great to work with, we were able to take the client’s individual requirements in terms of finish and colour, and nothing was too much of a problem. The lectern finish was very important for the School of Management as they wanted the lecterns to fit in with the finish of the room. Underneath these are metal lecterns so it was great that TeamMate provided the ability to finish them in a wood veneer – the end finish looks great and a lot of attention to detail has been put into the design.
Martin Clay, Head of Technical Sales Higher Education
Pure AV
