education

Acoustics, Technology, and Lighting – The Impact of COVID-19

This session will review the impact COVID-19 will have on building design and systems as it relates to acoustics, technology, and lighting design. Acoustically, the workplace will require redesigning. The current high-density hoteling of workers will not be accepted in the future due to social distancing. This will impact office acoustics as well as noise levels within restaurants.

Over the last 3 months, the A/E industry has found that most of us can work from a laptop and if we have a high-speed connection, can work from home. We have been remotely doing that at client meetings and job sites for years. It is the actual production work that is more efficient on larger and multiple monitors that will create the challenge.

Acoustics in Architecture – A Master Class

Participants will describe impact of background noise on speech and privacy
Participants will discuss acoustical importance of absorptive materials
Participants will describe impact of wall and ceiling construction on acoustics
Participants will list requirements for environmental noise, background noise, speech privacy and sound isolation

Resinous Floor and Wall Surfaces for Educational Facilities

Given the varied use of educational facility spaces – from classrooms to kitchens to gymnasiums – the selection of proper floor and wall surfaces is a complex decision involving many environmental considerations. The right system protects your investment, the wrong system could result in costly repairs, damage to the building and its contents, possibly an early replacement, regulatory citation or disruption to students and faculty. During the presentation, the presenter will discuss the following learning objectives to get a better understanding of resinous floor and wall surfaces for educational facilities.

High Performance & Resilient Precast Educational Facilities

The evolving construction industry, recent code changes, increasing sustainability requirements and challenging economy are just some of the factors increasing demand for safe, healthy, high performance educational facilities. Today’s schools are more than just buildings; they are interactive learning environments. They are gathering places. They are safe havens for the community. This presentation will discuss recommendations on how to design and build high performance, sustainable and resilient schools, with reduced life-cycle costs. The benefits of prefabrication and off-site construction will be identified in the context of precast/prestressed concrete architectural and structural building solutions. And case studies will highlight high performance attributes –  including optimization of numerous versatile, efficient and resilient building applications.