With its stunning art-deco style and distinctive clock-tower design featuring the prow of a Viking longboat – as a nod to Sweyn Forkbeard, thought to be the founder of Swansea – the Swansea Guild Hall building has won many admirers over the years.
Some of those had a different motivation for enthusing over the 82 year-old design classic; had World War 2 ended differently, the building’s future would have been very different from the one it enjoys today – in an occupied UK, the plan was for it to have served as a look-out post, thanks to the clear and stunning views it affords over the Irish Sea. That’s a very different role to the one the Grade One listed building plays today, as it is now home to both Swansea County Council and, more recently, a Vivitek D8800 projector.
Today, the D8800 is being used to share content ranging from PDFs, video presentations and for displaying plans that detail new planning applications or building proposals. This is made easier thanks to its rich feature set, which, for example enables up to ten user defined lens positions for focus, zoom, and lens shift to be set and stored via Lens Position Memory to ensure easy and flexible use in changing environments. Meanwhile, six interchangeable lens options are available for flexible positioning for a varying screen size or projection distance requirements. The D8800 projector also enables image edge blending and warping and geometric corrections for installations projected on curved surfaces. To date, the D8800 has received considerable praise from its users, ranging from the Guildhall’s caretaker and the Democratic and Facilities management departments.
Given the protected status of the Guild Hall, the projector had to meet strict requirements if it was to be an unobtrusive part of the meeting room environment. To that end, Auditel Systems worked closely with the National Heritage Trust to ensure it met with their guidelines, a process Auditel Systems had gone through before when managing similarly sensitive installation projects for Liverpool City Council, the London Borough of Camden and the Royal Parliament of Jersey, among others. In this case, the attention to detail extended to Auditel Systems creating a bespoke plinth made out of Australian walnut for the D8800 to be placed on, ensuring its mount fitted with the room’s historical décor.
Commenting on the D8800, Huw Evans, Head of Democratic Services, Swansea Guild Hall, said:
The D8800 delivers a crisp, clean and large image onto the screen. That was the main objective and challenge to overcome. Its ease of use, near-silent operation and five year warranty makes an already attractive projector an even more compelling proposition.
This application proves that with Vivitek projectors, tradition can merge seamlessly with technology to create a viewing experience that creates as much impact as the landmark building it is housed in.