White & Case Grand Hall Forum

THE EXPERIENCE

‘WOW’ is consistently the only word you hear when people first walk through the doors of the Grand Hall Forum conference room at White & Case. This new floor within the global law firm’s Manhattan headquarters is completely dedicated to hybrid meetings and conferences and is leading the way in the design and operation of the future of event spaces.

Designed to host up to 350 in-person participants and thousands virtually, it includes a showstopping 160ft x 9ft curved Lavender 1.2mm pixel pitch SiliconCore LED display which envelopes in-person attendees from the moment they enter the main presentation space.

This delivers a presentation canvas of 38,400 pixels x 2,160 pixels and generates a resolution the equivalent of 10x 4K screens, or 40 1080p displays, all on one continuous display.

BEHIND THE SCENES

Designed by consultant Technology Architecture Design (TAD), delivered by integrator IVCi and operated by meeting space specialists Convene, the solution needed to fulfil three different requirements simultaneously: broadcast, presentations and event rental.

This was a tall order for TAD, quite literally as the technology specifications were further complicated by the restrictions associated with working on the 48th floor, including a limited amount of chilled water for cooling and power restrictions for operation.

This threatened to pose a problem because most LED displays of this scale would require extensive cooling and the power cost alone would be too expensive to run a display of this size.

TAD needed to find an LED solution that would meet the pixel pitch and resolution requirements, allow the display to scale and curve, while performing to dictated power specifications and with minimal heat output to not require cooling.

SiliconCore’s patented Common Cathode driven LED display solution made this possible! It maximizes the performance of each pixel to reduce heat and power consumption. Running with dynamic content and calibrated to the ambient light of the space, just 18,000 watts of power is consumed across the whole display.

SiliconCore is also tried and tested in broadcast environments and performs well on camera, with minimal moire or flicker. The Lavender 1.2mm delivers controllable refresh rates of up to 7680Hz, 120Hz frame rate, high brightness of up to 2000 nits, high contrast and 160-degree viewing angle.

With multiple stakeholders involved in the daily operation of the space, TAD needed to ensure ease of operation and consistency with Convene’s other properties. Utilizing the Canvas software from Immersive Design Studios, content can be controlled from one user friendly iPad interface. This design, brings in a large variety of virtual participants, to further address the need for hybrid town hall meetings. Furthermore, the space is also platform agnostic, compatible with Teams, Zoom and Google.

SiliconCore displays feature across the whole event space, with an additional five 1.2mm Lavender displays in the breakout rooms, at 4K resolution and approximately 220” diagonal. These deliver a consistent user experience and are the perfect backdrops for presentations where every detail can be seen and even participants seated close to the screen have a comfortable, and cool, viewing experience.

There is also a welcome wall in the lobby, which is displayed unconventionally in a convex curve, the opposite of what you usually see. At approximately 8’ x 9’, this wall utilizes SiliconCore’s proprietary LISA encapsulation technology. This key feature for the 1.2mm curved display, protects the LEDs at the PCB level, resulting in enhanced durability, protecting the display from any knocks from passersby. The extended viewing angles and optimum color uniformity are also attributes that set it apart, worthy of a welcome wall to wow the audience.

One additional display of this size welcomes people to the Grand Hall Forum as well, totaling nine 1.2mm Lavender displays to ‘wow’ and inform attendees. This state of the art facility, is well positioned to address the needs of an ever changing collaborative workspace and is helping to re-define large hybrid event spaces.