A fusion of uniformity and flexibility
The university wanted to take advantage of current trends in education that focus on teamwork and flexibility. They opted to provide a mobile collaboration solution for its students that allowed group work to be conducted, but without losing the flexibility of the space. The main AV system within the room needed to be based on the university’s current PLS standard, to allow sustainability and support from the Cardiff University team.
Cardiff University
Redwood Building
GV has a long standing relationship with Cardiff University for over 25 years. During that time, the team has provided a myriad of solutions ranging from small meetings rooms to comprehensive new build systems, while also covering everything in between.
Taking up a large part of the University’s rolling upgrades, the team has been heavily involved in the learning spaces refurbishment project, which involved a variety of solutions being integrated throughout the University.
With buildings scattered throughout the Welsh Capital, Cardiff University isn’t located on a campus. Having said that, the closest thing the renowned HE establishment has to a central site is the cluster of buildings that have been constructed to blend in with the stunning Edwardian listed buildings in Cathays Park.
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Working with GV is always a straightforward experience with minimal issues. They worked alongside our Main Contractor and associated trades and all parties worked efficiently together.
We are extremely pleased with the overall solution - particularly the attention to detail when designing and building the units. This included small detail such as being able to access the Kramer VIA housed inside the unit and providing safety measures for power cables in the event of an accident. This involved forward planning with Teammate to ensure the collaborative units contained all the facilities required.
GVAV was tasked with providing a mobile collaboration solution that could be individually controllable, but also provide wireless and local connectivity to students in order to facilitate group work.
The solution was to double up as a whiteboard in order to allow students to brainstorm ideas.
To accommodate this flexible solution, Cardiff University needed to utilise a large space. Redwood’s large seminar room 2.59 proved the ideal environment in order to create a multi-group collaborative space. It was also important to consider that the room is used for multiple types of sessions, including exams, so any solution employed would need to not infringe upon the flexibility of the space. It was therefore decided that any solution would need to be mobile in nature and pack away within the room boundaries.
The ideal collaboration solution
GV worked with several manufacturers in order to audition a number of mobile display solutions. TeamMate Evolve was the preferred option having provided the best solution for the space in way of mobility and aesthetics.
GV worked closely with the TeamMate product design team in order to further customise the product. This included providing an ingress for the soundbar and a service port to still allow access to the buttons on the included Kramer VIA units. The decision was made to provide each of the Evolve units in a different colour, so that the academic could assign the groups identifiers that would make group collaboration easier.
Delivery of flexibility
Ultimately, the suite needed to cover the best of both worlds in terms of site-wide uniformity and a brand-new collaboration setup. In achieving this, the main system was to provide high quality video and audio to the students while the space utilised a collaborative system for students in order to facilitate group work and allow them to showcase their contributions.
The project stands as an example of the consistent high-quality solutions applied to the PLS Programme while satisfying the requirement for collaboration and flexibility – thanks in no small
part to TeamMate’s superb solution.