Education

Acentech Designs Acoustics and AV Systems for Notre Dame Stayer Center

Interior of Stayer Center ©Barbara Johnston

Interior of Stayer Center / © Barbara Johnston

Cambridge, MA – Acentech, a multidisciplinary acoustics, audiovisual systems design, and vibration consulting firm, recently provided architectural acoustics consulting and audiovisual systems design for the University of Notre Dame Stayer Center for Executive Education at the Mendoza College of Business. Located in Notre Dame, Indiana, the 63,500 sf multistory educational building is the new home of the Notre Dame Executive MBA and its executive education custom and certificate programs.

 

 

Interior of Stayer Center ©-Barbara Johnston

Interior of Stayer Center/  © Barbara Johnston

Designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, the Stayer Center’s exterior Collegiate Gothic style maintains the architectural consistency of the campus established by Ralph Adams Cram in the 1920s, while its interior features are modern and technologically advanced. Some of the key features of the design include large, soaring windows that provide plenty of natural light, a two-story grand concourse, entrances on each side of the building, and garden terraces large enough to hold graduation and other events. The building received LEED Silver certification from the USGBC.

 

The Stayer Center features multiple executive-style classrooms and team spaces with state-of-the-art educational technology to accommodate interactive learning. Acentech provided audiovisual design and consulting for these spaces, focusing on advanced technology deployment to service the community. The building features extended ceiling heights, designed with the audiovisual systems as the primary driver in the room configurations. The integration of audiovisual technology along with the architecture required multiple audiovisual design models to be constructed. Acentech met the challenges of the project with an all-digital backbone system for the transport of the audiovisual signals throughout the whole building.

 

Acentech also consulted on architectural acoustics, focused on achieving excellent speech intelligibility in the classrooms and conference rooms, and supporting the acoustical needs for the operation of the advanced audiovisual systems. Acentech’s consultants accomplished this by recommending sound-absorptive and reflective surfaces on the walls and ceilings, upgraded constructions for suitable sound isolation, and working with the MEP team to achieve low background noise levels from the mechanical systems.