City of Richmond Council Chambers

The Richmond council chamber was designed by a joint venture of architects Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg from Toronto and Hotson Bakker Architects from Vancouver, and we developed the original A/V system design for the room as well as the subsequent technology upgrade a decade and a half later. The room has a digital video presentation system with two rear projection screens, high brightness LCD video projectors, 19" widescreen LCD computer monitors mounted in the mayor/council and staff desks for display of all video-based presentation materials.

Video sources include computer presentations that can be sourced from the presenter's positions, staff positions, and the clerk or manager's positions, and a ceiling mount HD video document camera. The audio system uses directional line array microphones mounted on the name plate holders and a mix-minus loudspeaker configuration for the desks, plus an auto-mix buss for the ceiling speakers in the public gallery area. The press desks have audio distribution of the mix, as does the Shaw Cable TV coverage. There is an integrated HD robotic camera system in the chamber with the control room located in a small room across the foyer from the chamber manned by Shaw's cable operators, eliminating the need for a remote truck. The cable TV also gets a video feed of all presentation material, including scan converted computer presentations.

The touch screen control system allows the city clerk to operate the technical systems, room lights and window shades, and control and preview the video sources. The touch screen also operates the order-of-speaking queue. The mayor has a touch panel display that allows him to view the names in the queue and/or control the queue if desired. The order of speaking queue has a display on each desk that let each person know when they are in the queue and when they are live. They can also drop themselves out of the queue if someone else has dealt with their issue. The room is used by several committes as well, so the system can be set for order-of-speaking operation or a free run auto-mix for conventional committee meetings.