by Carolyn Heinze
Photo of Colonial Baptist Church, Cary, North Carolina courtesy of ASA Photographics of Pensacola, Florida.

For churches, which are very often faced with the challenge of being many different things to many different people, it's important to have a space that can accommodate the needs of the moment: one evening, it may perform as a gymnasium; the next, it may be used for a prayer meeting. While these multi-function spaces are viewed as a practical, economical solution, if not planned properly, they can wind up causing major problems down the road.

This is especially true if the space is going to house audio, video and lighting systems. "The key is for the church to properly program the uses of the space before they start the technology design," notes R. Bob Adams, senior consultant at Hoover & Keith, Inc., a Houston, Texas-based acoustical, audio, video and lighting consultancy. "The multipurpose room is the most-used building on the entire campus. It is the one room that works, if designed properly, for most any kind of large gatherings."

Curt Graber, president of Custom Sound Designs, an audio/video design and integration firm operating out of Grabill, Indiana, emphasizes the importance of involving audio/video experts long before the space is ready for the technical systems. "A very important part of our job is trying to arrange it so that we can be involved with the design aspect initially," he adds. "We can eliminate the need to play damage control at a later date. If we put enough planning into it during the early stages, and define exactly what their application requirements are going to be, a lot of times we can steer them around some of the typical downfalls that you run into."

For Shaun Crossen, systems designer at Shanahan Sound & Electronics, an A/V design and installation company in Lowell, Massachusetts, the proper development of a multi-function space begins with, as he calls it, the backbone. "The first thing I impress upon churches is to get a handle on the way technology is developing," he says. "We are already using Category 5 cabling for things like remote control, and transmission of audio and video through long distances. The new cabling, such as Category 6 and 7, are going to be coming with higher bandwidth capabilities. Also, we are seeing fiber optic cabling being specified more and more, although it still is unusual to find it in a church.

"Churches need to be thinking about connectivity," Crossen continues. "Are the electrical outputs in the right place? Do they have enough space in the equipment cabinets? Have they taken into consideration the furniture that they are building in? It's really a backbone issue."

Adams points out that the consideration of sound is crucial to the design of a multi-function space. "Design it from the beginning for sound," he says. "Don't design the room and then have someone put panels on the walls. When you do that, you are trying to retrofit sound into a space that may have been designed inappropriately. If you get someone that understands acoustic sound early in the project, you can have the room designed to function properly. Then, after the room is designed acoustically, the electro-acoustical system can be designed for its real purpose: sound reinforcement. In other words, by designing the room first, the sound system becomes reinforcement, not an electronic tool to mask a physical room problem."

"Room acoustics can be a real problem in these multi-function rooms," explains Greg Dieckhaus, systems engineer at Wizdum/IMS, an A/V design and integration firm in Elmhurst, Illinois. "Typically, these rooms are built economically with basic construction materials. This plainness, combined with square or rectangular dimensions, creates a room with warehouse acoustics. Churches should work closely with their architect to specify building materials that make the acoustics better. Materials such as slotted cinderblock and tectum provide good management of room reverberation without high cost."

The allocation of power must also be considered early on, Adams notes. "Most people design multipurpose spaces as they would a gym or a fellowship hall," he observes. "You don't need much power in a gym. When you are considering a lighting system and a sound system you will. Power seems like a small issue, but if not designed into the base building, you have a serious problem. Retrofitting power is expensive!"

Because many multi-function spaces are used for athletic activities, it's necessary to protect the audio, video and lighting systems—often made up of fragile equipment—once they are installed. Dieckhaus openly admits that he isn't fond of installing systems that may suffer the consequences of a poorly passed basketball. "My best recommendation to a church that is contemplating the design of a multi-function room would be to minimize the use of the space for athletics," he states. "As an A/V systems designer, if I know that I don't need to make my systems withstand ball strikes, I have a lot more design flexibility."

That said, Dieckhaus is accustomed to taking athletics into consideration. "Our two biggest challenges with these rooms involve ease-of-use and durability," he notes. "Because of the multi-function aspect of these rooms, it is difficult to implement the kind of polished permanent system design that we would use in a permanent space. Our design for a multi-function room tends to be a hybrid of our performing arts/gymnasium/meeting hall solutions."

Such a solution can make for clumsy set-up and teardown procedures, Dieckhaus points out. "With these rooms having athletic activities in some cases, fragile electronic equipment such as video projectors and audio mixers must be hidden and/or protected in some way," he says. "If the sound system's audio mixer needs to be unplugged and removed from the space each time, proper set-up can be a real problem. If the video equipment needs to be removed each time, video system set-up can be convoluted and bothersome."

Mark Seney, project manager at Ford Audio-Video Systems, Inc., an A/V systems integration firm based in Oklahoma City, observes that many churches opt to install air walls into one large space, enabling the room to be transformed into two separate spaces if required. "If they close the air walls off, they integrated projects and relationships, which greatly facilitated the process. Integration, they agree, is the absolute key to success in multi-functionality.

Contractors at All Pro Sound, Mainstage Theatrical Supply and Whitlock report that they are all extremely happy with the end result of the Crowne Centre. The installers and the college technical staff agreed that a project the size and scope of the Crowne Centre must be a coordinated effort. Designers and installers had to be involved on a day-to-day basis to insure all the details were worked out along the way, not discovered too late and causing lengthy and costly delays if not irrevocable consequences. Additionally, the major contract firms have a long history of need to have the sound system configured from acting as one sound system for one large room, to two separate sound systems for two rooms. In today's world of DSP (digital signal processing) technology, that's easy to do with a few clicks of a mouse," he says. "What they must consider with a space that is separated by air walls is volume levels. You don't want someone in the next room watching a movie with a lot of bass, and then people in the other room having a prayer meeting."

Careful planning, well in advance, is suggested even if the church that is building the multi-function space does not have immediate plans to implement audio, video and lighting systems. At some point down the road, it's likely that these systems will become a requirement _ not a luxury _ and if the proper infrastructure is already in place, half the battle is won. "They may not want a big A/V system the day they open the door, but in the future they may want it," says Adams. "You must have the structure to hold the equipment, the conduit to run the wires and the air conditioning to cool the additional lighting load. These are all building decisions that affect the technology long before the building is ever finished."

Carolyn Heinze (carolyn@punchface.com) works from her media services firm, Punchface Propaganda Machine.