A collaboration between architect, consultant and integrator has resulted in three new event spaces for the British Academy. Paul
Milligan visited the site to find out how it was done.
Built in 1831 by designs from John Nash, Carlton House Terrace is a beautiful Georgian townhouse in London’s tourist, political and Royal district. It’s had a fascinating history in its nearly 200 years. It was home to then Prime Minister William Gladstone and has been the residence of a variety of dukes and earls. It was a First World War hospital for wounded officers, and more recently it’s been home to the Foreign Press Association.
The British Academy was established by Royal Charter in 1902 as a fellowship of academics in the humanities and social sciences. Today it consists of more than 1,500 scholars in the UK and globally, as well as being a registered charity and a funding body for research in the humanities and social sciences. Like many charities, the British Academy relies on the private hire of its spaces to help fund its work. All profits made from the commercial hire of its building go back into funding the Academy’s activities, including public engagement. It’s in a prime location in London and saw an opportunity to increase venue bookings and increase its reach globally through a reimagined series of public events, bringing the best of the humanities and social science to bear on issues of culture and current affairs.

all images: Hufton+Crow
The new spaces created by the project were the key enablers of this opportunity. Both buildings – 10 and 11 Carlton House Terrace - were occupied by the Academy in 1998 and joined together in an architectural project in 2010. Architects Wright & Wright were engaged, with a brief to increase accessibility and modernise the spaces, with a focus on environmental sustainability, while remaining sympathetic to the historic nature and grandeur of the building, all to increase the Academy’s global reach and attract audiences that may not have considered the Academy before. The initial design was to transform the basement into an events space.
Originally engaged in 2018 to advise on the IT facilities in the upper parts of the building, consultants Recursive were then tasked with designing the AV spaces in the new lower section of the building. What the end result would be, changed significantly on either side of the pandemic, as Paul Marshall, associate director, Recursive explains: “The original brief was for a single auditorium for 200-300 seats with a balcony and side areas as breakout spaces. But then Covid hit, and the client with the help from W&W and Recursive’s concept report from a year before had a change of heart for what the spaces could be. To start with, it was three empty white boxes.” We had to go through a process of understanding what would best serve them, says Richard Smith, director, Recursive, “but to have a blank canvas is a great starting point.”

To find out what the client wants, he says is like unravelling a ball of string. “You said you want to do this, why do you want to do this? What do you think that really means to you? A lot of the British Academy Stakeholders attend a lot of events themselves, so you can ask, what have you seen elsewhere that’s nice?” The new design was to transform an existing basement, a warren of corridors and small rooms, into a double-height arrangement of three main presentation spaces - Wohl Gallery, the Lecture Room and the Shape Room - delivering nearly 500 sq m of new events space. Although the spaces are similar in style, they are different. This was deliberate, says Marshall: “The client has been doing events for many years, but it was about how we could bring them up a level in terms of what they’re able to provide versus their competitors. How can we best make the architectural features work so they are able to deliver something unique?”
Recursive designed and wrote the AV technical specification and approached several integrators to pitch for the integration contract, with Media Powerhouse awarded the contract after an extensive evaluation process. The first thing visitors to the Lecture Room see upon entering the space is an enormous 4m x 4m NEC LED videowall. “The LED was originally meant to fill the wall entirely. The first plans were for a videowall wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling, I wanted to create an infinity wall, but we couldn’t actually go to the floor because behind the wall is where the HVAC lives,” says Marshall. The videowall, made up of tiles of 1.9mm LED, is ‘almost’ 1:1 in shape, and HD resolution. The idea behind the videowall was to offer something different says Marshall, “Where else in London could you invite a digital artist in to have something of that size that isn’t a gallery?”

Panasonic PTZ cameras are fitted to provide video meeting and streaming functionality when required. All three rooms have the ability to run videoconferencing, but can also stream, record, and provide monitoring for overflow into the other rooms. Audio is delivered via d&b audiotechnik loudspeakers built into the walls, and two Sennheiser Team Connect microphone panels are installed 5m high in the ceiling. Handheld mics are also on hand if required, and Crestron wall plates supply localised user control. One request throughout the project was for the spaces to offer flexibility, as the rooms may be used separately or opened up in different room configurations. To do this, Recursive has put floor plates and facility wall panels in, each one featuring a myriad of connectivity including fibre, Cat6, video and audio. There is also the option to attach a portable cart or a mixing desk if the need arises. Each room also features a bar code to scan for assistive hearing connectivity.
Walking into the Wohl Gallery next door, the feel is similar, but the design is different. Instead of a large videowall, Recursive went for a 20,000 lumens Epson projector for a combination of budgetary and architectural reasons, “it’s trying not to be too impactful on the architecture, once the projector is switched off, there’s nothing there,” says Smith. The Wohl Gallery also features Martin DMX lighting, a Crestron wall panel and audio comes from a Sennheiser Team Connect ceiling mic and radio mics. The speakers are again d&b but provided a challenge in this space because the client wanted artwork on the walls. “We ended up having to rotate the wall mounted speakers to avoid the artwork, because you can rotate the horn and the dispersion pattern remains very good,” says Marshall.

The Wohl Gallery has an 86-in display with a Bose VB1 videobar beneath it so the room can handle different configurations of Teams meetings. The three rooms may have been initially designed as event spaces, but it’s a sign of the times that the requirement for Teams meetings in each one is so fundamental. “Hybrid Meetings are the most common type of event. We didn’t have the capacity for large hybrid meetings when I joined. The academy holds over a hundred larger hybrid meetings a year,” explains Ross Watson, AV manager for the British Academy.
The Shape Room is perhaps the most traditional events space of the three and is aimed at usage for lectures and talks. It even has a small green room for presenters to get themselves ready adjacent to the stage. Where it differs from the norm is in its lighting and projection choices.
Above the stage are four Epson projectors blended together on 12m-long curved screen built into the wall. Hanging on the same rigging as the projectors are two d&b subwoofers, working alongside d&b in-wall speakers. The curvature of the ‘screen’ has been created via a piece of bespoke joinery painted the exact colour as the walls around it to completely blend in.
“When I was talking to the architects and the design team, I was constantly going on about the fact that this wall needs to be perfect if we’re not putting up a fixed screen. It’s a custom-built piece of joinery to make that wall absolutely flat and they’ve done a lovely job,” says Marshall. The curved screen has an approximate resolution of 4350 x 1200 pixels.

“We were going to put Goo projection paint on it because it cures nice and smooth and has reflective particles, but we were conscious that we didn’t want it to look like a screen, so we didn’t want to have a different colour. We asked the architect if we could paint it in a nice matt grey colour to aid projection and they agreed,” adds Smith. Because the ‘screen’ has four projectors filling it with content, it allows for the possibility of banners, or picture in picture, or other visual effects venue organisers might request when hiring the room.
The Shape Room features four white De Sisti motorised lighting hoists facing the stage, equipped with power, DMX, LAN ports and loudspeaker connections. The
hoist can be lowered to any height required. “When we were specifying lighting bars we looked long and hard to find products that would fit, because a lot of products are very industrial looking,” says Marshall. Recursive’s ability to provide AV that was ultra flexible was tested to the limit when asked if the newly installed hoist could be used by trapeze artists. The answer was a polite “not really” says Marshall with a smile.

The removable stage has a bespoke lectern (designed by the architect in an identical wood finish as the flooring) with two mics to ensure coverage of the speaker. The AV system is connected to the Lutron lighting system, which can scroll up/down motorised blinds if sunlight coming into the basement room is causing an issue. Panasonic PTZ cameras are placed front, rear and on each side to cover any streaming or recording requirements.
Above the lighting hoists is a small window, behind which lies the control room, which is able to oversee what happens in this room. The other two rooms can be viewed from the control room via feeds from the PTZ cameras in each room. Digital signage across the three rooms is managed from the control room via a TriplePlay system, alongside Adder KVM systems, with an Epiphan Video Pearl-2 video production system performing the streaming and Blackmagic ATEM handling the recording of any live streams.
Benjamin Thomas-Lewin, SI commissioning engineer, from Media Powerhouse explains how the AV is controlled around the site: “Crestron is the master controller in the room spaces, it’s processed by Q-Sys as the default, they can opt to where they need to bring in the mixer. In The Shape Room they tend to take the Yamaha app and just mix it in the room. The idea is that the Crestron system sits there as a safety net if somebody just wants to go in the room and hit a button that says ‘presentation’.”
One piece of technology adopted by Recursive on previous jobs and brought across on this one for Media Powerhouse to work with was the TouchDesigner development platform, creating a bespoke video switcher and control surface. Thomas-Lewin explains how it works here, “It’s probably the most bespoke thing here, it’s doing the video processing for all three spaces and allows us to custom code and create whatever we want. We’ve added in all of our Sennheiser mics so it can tell you what the battery levels are etc. We’ve done this instead of buying a video processor, we’re only using exactly what we need rather than paying for a box with lots of features we don’t need. The beauty of it is that unlike some control systems and programmes it’s not a closed system, there’s nothing anybody won’t be able to go back into and customise themselves or troubleshoot.”

Having been involved in the project since 2018, this has been a long labour of love for Recursive, and challenges have been many. “We’ve been here all the way through. We’ve been walking through mud at times during the construction phase. It’s certainly very difficult to visualise the space when they’re digging out piles of dirt, but our 3D renders helped. There was a lorry outside for what felt like a year just excavating earth,” says Smith.
The project is a clear example of client, consultant, architect, and integrator all being on the same page and all understanding and respecting each other’s roles in creating what is a fantastic final product, fully in keeping with the building’s traditions and architecture.
In terms of what the British Academy can do now, it’s obviously a giant leap forward says Watson. “When I joined we had a couple of mobile setups and that would take time to set up. Getting these spaces makes a massive difference.”
KIT LIST
Adder Adderlink ALIF4001R IP, Adderlink ALIF4001T IP KVM
BlackMagic Design ATEM 1 M/E switcher, ATEM Constellation switcher, Multiview 4 video processor, Hyperdeck Studio recorder/encoder
Bose VB1 videobar
Chauvet RDMXSplitter8 lighting
Crestron MPC 201 control panel, CP4N control engine, NVX D30, NVX E30, NVX-351, NVX-360 decoder/encoders, TSW-770 touch panels
d&b 5D, 10D amplifiers, DS10, DAD Core 256 audio bridges
De Sisti lighting bars
Entec SPLAY lighting controller
Epiphan Pearl 2 recorder/rncoder
Elgato Streamdeck USB controller
Epson EB-PU2220W projectors
Extron AXI44 audio interface
Full Fat Audio FFA amplifiers
Glensound Divine loudspeakers
LG 55-in 55UR640S, 65-in LG 65UR640S displays
Martin ELP PAR LED fixtures and ERA 300 Profile moving heads
Martin Audio CDD-Live 8 loudspeakers
Monitor Audio IWS-10 subwoofers
Netgear GS305EPP network switches
Novastar MCTRL LED processor
Panasonic AW-UE50 PTZ cameras
QSC NL-C4 loudspeaker, Q-Sys Core 510i DSP, Atterotech UND6IO-BT bluetooth panel
Sennheiser Team-Connect2, SLDW MCR4 microphones
Sharp NEC LED-FE019i2 LED displays
Skaarhoj ATEM TCP interface, PTZ Extreme camera controller
TouchDesigner software
Unigest Tripleplay TPS HDMI signage encoder, SP2 media players
Yamaha QL1Audio Mixer
Zero 88 FLX S48 lighting controllers