Leading UK based system integrator Sysco has completed an extensive audio-visual interactive work in the new Darwin Centre at London’s Natural History Museum, with BSS Audio Soundweb components providing the entire digital audio networking backbone.
The £78 million Darwin Centre, a brand new extension to the museum, occupies a spectacular eight-storey-high concrete Cocoon suspended within a glass outer box. It allows museum visitors and scientists to share for the first time the excitement of exploring, studying and preserving the natural world.
Sysco is lead AV contractor on the project, on behalf of project managers Cultural Innovations. Cocoon features an array of exhibits, each unique, in a curved walkway that spirals through several of its floors. The exhibits make full use of state of the art technology to enhance the visitor experience and provide easy access to multiple layers of information.
Audio commentary and subtle sound effects are delivered from multiple HD based sources via five SW3088 Soundweb Lite stand-alone devices controlling a variety of mission-specific loudspeakers (including JBL Control 24s and 25s) via the amplifiers — as well as providing a fire alarm interface.
They are set in three large rack rooms covering the ground floor atrium, Level 7 (where the Darwin exhibition begins), down to Level 5 (where it ends).
Said Sysco project manager, Chris Mothersdale, “Since the building is a cocoon, with a concave wall concrete construction is highly reverberant, with strange curves and reflections. Therefore, Soundweb has played a major role in processing the audio. For what we needed the Green BSS Soundweb Lite 3088 devices were perfect.”
Although the smaller Soundweb Lites are stand-alone boxes, the three rack rooms are networked with the sources routed to the amps via Cisco switches.
Soundweb feeds nearly 30 exhibits site-wide from PC’s, Macs, HD video or local input panels — some exhibits requiring up to four separate sources. Soundweb can also switch between exhibition audio and presentation mode (for example with demonstrations using a visualiser). These presentation inputs are local and the Soundweb mode is switched locally.
Different volume presets are also stored in the Soundwebs — programmed by Sysco’s in-house team — allowing three different levels to be accessed (depending on whether the exhibition is busy or quiet). Overall we are using show control.
Operating under master show control, the Soundweb configuration handles around 40 inputs and between 40-50 outputs (including stereo outputs) and does so extremely efficiently, according to the Sysco project manager.
“We worked to a tight brief from the client, the Natural History Museum’s design team,” says Sysco managing director Hugo Roche. “They wanted us to recommend and develop innovative technology solutions, moving forwards from the familiar touch screen interactives to ideas that would be more unexpected and more subtly engaging for visitors of all ages. The unique and extraordinary shape of the Cocoon presented a lot of exciting challenges, not least the cabling installation, for which we were also awarded the contract, with very complex cable runs through the structure.
“It has been an amazing and challenging project for us to work on,” added Roche, “and we are extremely proud to be part of what is set to be one of the UK’s top visitor attractions.”
About The Darwin Centre
The Darwin Centre also houses, alongside the Cocoon, the Attenborough Studio, a state-of-the-art communication centre, and the Angela Marmont Centre for UK Biodiversity – a new resource centre for people or organisations with an interest in UK natural history. The NaturePlus card allows visitors to personalise their journey around Cocoon, collecting favourite exhibits and specimens, and discovering more about them online at home.
The Darwin Centre represents the future for the Natural History Museum as a world leader in researching the burning issues facing humans and the natural world. It opens the doors on the Natural History Museum’s life as a major science infrastructure where, by using the Museum’s internationally important collections, scientists deliver research that has a global impact; develop tools for the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources worldwide and research issues such as disease, climate change and threats to the Earth’s biodiversity.
Major supporters of the Darwin Centre include the Heritage Lottery Fund, The Wellcome Trust, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, The Garfield Weston Foundation, The Cadogan Family, Professor Anthony and Mrs Angela Marmont, GlaxoSmithKline plc, The Rufford Maurice Laing Foundation and The Dr Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation.
