This trend is driving designers and builders of healthcare facilities to attach paramount importance to information technology infrastructure, and to focus more than ever on ways to put high-end imaging and displays at the command of doctors and other healthcare providers. more>>

Zellerbach Hall is one of the jewels of the University of California Berkeley campus. Housed in an American Institute of Architects Honors Award-winning building, the 2,014-seat hall is home to Cal Performances, the largest presenter of performing arts in the San Francisco Bay Area. Cal Performances brings to the hall a wide range of performances, including orchestral, chamber music, jazz, theatrical, dance, spoken word, operatic, and all variety of ethnic performances from around the world. The university also makes use of Zellerbach for graduations and other major university events. Plainly, Zellerbach Hall is the definitive multipurpose venue.

This diversity of program material imposes immense demands on the hall's acoustics, as the needs of orchestral performances, recitals, and graduations are at odds with each other. While the hall has an orchestra shell that helps sound project and aids musicians in hearing each other, erecting and striking it is a laborious and time-consuming process that makes it difficult to hold events of different types of material even as close together as consecutive days, not to mention accommodate events mixing genres on the same program. What's more, the shell does not enable the hall to fully meet the range of acoustical requirements, as it cannot sufficiently alter the hall's basic reverberation characteristics. more>>