Industrial furniture specialist Tecno now has the discrete, interactive technology to match the modern craftsmanship of its offerings thanks to local integrator Videoworks. Charlotte Ashley reports.
Tecno is an international company that distinguishes itself on the engineering and technological innovation of its designs for the modern workspace. The company has operated for more than 60 years and recently required an AV upgrade to reinforce its philosophy at its Milan headquarters. Two years in the making, the manufacturer’s ethos of the “discrete elegance of technology” has come to life thanks to the collaboration between Ancona-based integrator Videoworks, TIM, STMicroelectronics, Digitronica.it, Ilevia, InfoSolution and study Gtp to introduce a comprehensive IoT furniture system.
A long-term partner of Tecno, Videoworks was tasked with researching and delivering an integrated system for meeting room and presentation spaces, equipped for videoconferencing and content sharing, and most critically, making technologies invisible to the eye. “This project was a very unique and ambitious project. Many components of the project had to be invisible and had to be placed into small spaces in order to communicate with one another,” says Juri Tartaglini, system engineer at Videoworks.
“Our biggest challenge was placing the monitor into a glass wall that was only 55mm thick.”
“Our biggest challenge was placing the monitor into a glass wall that was only 55mm thick.” The touch displays offers a brightness of 700cd/m2, and are suitable for 24-hour operation. It is accompanied by a HD webcam providing a 78-degree ï¬eld of view and high-level optics with autofocus. Touch screens running room booking software are also deployed outside rooms. Antelio glass used in the glass partitioning (devised by Tecno itself) in the ofï¬ce ensures all equipment is concealed when not in use by staff, incorporating an acoustic diffuser invisible to the eye that transforms the material into an acoustic surface.
The wider system of interconnected furniture throughout ofï¬ce and meeting rooms is designed to enable Tecno to recognise user preferences, while collecting, analysing and providing data for the improvement of their well-being from activity in the building. From the moment users are authenticated via their personal ID card information on the access of different equipment and functionality, hours worked, meetings attended and the reservation of workstations and meeting rooms is logged – managed by the company’s internal IT team. The interaction between objects, contexts and employees is analysed to help improve efï¬ciency, safety, energy consumption and environmental comfort in the building. “Besides improving the quality of the individual’s work, these functionalities allow a detailed management of data collected by the manager and the optimisation of the maintenance costs of the building,” says Tartaglini.
As Tecno collect more data from the project, Videoworks are working on implementing the second stage of the project. This involves developing prototype solutions that can contain all the control electronic devices used in project.
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