Your browser is out-of-date!

Update your browser to view this website correctly. Update my browser now

×

Christie finds itself at Ordnance Survey HQ

Ordnance Survey is the UK's national mapping agency, and integrator RaceTech specified and installed a range of Christie projectors at its new HQ.

When Ordnance Survey, Great Britain’s national mapping agency, purchased the 16 acres of land at Adanac Park for its new state-of-the-art Southampton Head Office, the organisation was determined that the £42m project would be environmentally sympathetic.

Known as ‘Explorer House’, the three-storey building benefits from a number of natural resources and renewable energy sources at the heart of a sustainable development; this provides a modern and efficient workspace suited to an information business for a workforce of 1,100 staff, including surveyors and cartographers. The audio visual infrastructure needed to reflect that concept.

The giant atrium at the centre of the building forms the social hub of the head office, employing both customer and staff facing technologies, and linking the offices with the business centre.

Over 100 companies responded to the OJEU tender for the building’s audio visual systems, and integrator RaceTech was the winning bidder. A wide range of Christie projectors was chosen exclusively to meet the requirements laid down in the original core specification document, but the requirement developed organically once the staff moved in and the organisation understood how the building could be used most effectively.

In the 180-seat Solent Lecture Theatre, a Christie HD10K-M – designated as the mapping projector in 1,920 x 1,080 high definition – was later complemented by a second 1-chip HD projector (Christie DHD800), mounted on a scissor lift and facing in the opposite direction. This now projects onto an electric drop-down Da-Lite screen over a removable stage as required, complete with double drapes and LED colour-changers; this enables a wide range of different events to be staged.

Events range from major international conferences to hosting visits from utility companies and other government organisations as well as staging staff briefing events and leadership seminars.

Since the theatre is also regularly booked out for business group meetings — while doubling as the home for the Ordnance Survey Film Club — it was vital that that the Solent Theatre’s HD10K-M and Da-Lite widescreen were working in perfect harmony over a long duty cycle.

The Lecture Theatre takes line feeds from CD, Blu-ray and PC, using HDMI and VGA analogue; there are four control patch points on the floor and an acrylic lectern, while Extron devices are used for scaling and source switching.
Elsewhere, of the available rooms around the building, ten are Christie-equipped. Selected were seven LW555 3LCD 5,500 lumen WXGA projectors for widescreen resolution in the various training rooms, meeting rooms and boardroom together with a 10,000 lumen LX1000 3LCD XGA projector.

The AV environment operates under Crestron touch screen control and with the many differently-configured meeting spaces in high demand, their Room View booking solution is integrated on the Ordnance Survey centralised Exchange server and calendaring system; this allows for easy booking of rooms via touch screen panels or across the HQ’s IT infrastructure — and as with the localised LED and fluorescent lighting the content source selection is controllable via touch panel controllers.

www.christiedigital.eu