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University of Florida - Stuzin Hall

Gainesville, Florida

The University of Florida, located in Gainesville, FL is home to the Warrington College of Business and David Stuzin Hall. The building houses four large classrooms where classes for the Undergraduate School of Business are held. Room 102, an existing 1,500sf 80-student ground floor classroom, underwent a renovation to create an immersive hybrid learning environment.

Designing the room as a prototype to meet end user’s needs, Thorburn Associates provided acoustical, audiovisual, and lighting design. The Audiovisual portion of the project was designed to perform as a hybrid system allowing flexibility between teaching styles and student participation. Tracking cameras strategically placed throughout the room can not only track the instructor during a class but can also track both remote and in-person student interaction. The teaching wall is designed with various use cases and can act as a single high-resolution image or an ultrawide extended desktop using the ceiling mounted projectors. The teaching wall also includes large secondary displays, one of which features touch interactivity. Displays on the side walls of the classroom act as “additional seating” for remote students with each group paired with a wall mounted speaker bar that allows the instructor to know which section of remote students interacts with the class. The audio system features not only voice lift for presentations or classes, but also supplies the room with full surround sound for video feeds.

A distance learning classroom requires a very controlled acoustical environment, particularly when the space has multiple microphones and loudspeakers. To maximize performance and for visual consistency, Thorburn Associates made recommendations for placement of acoustically absorptive materials on both the walls and ceiling. The geometric ceiling tiles, with the looks of peaks and valleys, dial down noise while keeping the aesthetics of the room visually appealing. In order to maintain a low mechanical noise level, internal acoustical duct liners were installed on all new ductworks.

Thorburn Associates provided a comprehensive report and lighting design for the classroom. The project involved creating task lighting for the students and broadcast lighting to illuminate the professor, catering to the hybrid in-class and remote learning model. The design included zoning the fixtures to enable different lighting classroom scenes. This allows the lighting control system to seamlessly integrate with the AV system during presentations while allowing for easy control reversion to the lighting system for other classroom activities. The lighting report’s fixture list and lighting control hardware ensured that the lighting budget stayed on track and adhered to the strict illumination requirements set by the campus.

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