Institution of Engineering and Technology London, United Kingdom

By

Institution of Engineering and Technology

Author

Posted

The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) is one of the world’s largest engineering institutions with a membership of 168,000 across 150 countries. IET’s Savoy Place headquarters is an 1886 building in a prime central London location looking across the River Thames to the Royal Festival Hall. IET undertook a comprehensive refurbishment of Savoy Place reflective of 21^st century technological advancement. Savoy Place now has state-of-the-art provisions for members, visitors, guests, and hirers. The building features lecture, conference, and seminar facilities, together with public gathering spaces for social events, weddings, and functions. Sound Space Design and Anne Minors Performance Consultants were appointed to provide specialist acoustics and theatre planning consultancy for the building’s principal spaces.

SSD addressed the acoustical deficiencies of the existing lecture theatre, improving sound isolation and speech intelligibility. SSD also undertook a building-wide review addressing room acoustics for seminars, meeting rooms, and open study areas – marrying the needs of modern AV and communications technology with the conflicting natural room acoustic of tall, glazed, reverberant spaces. Acoustical challenges included the noise and vibration mitigation of plant amid considerable space restrictions, and incorporation of state-of-the-art AV, theatre equipment, and building services systems within the historic fabric of the building.

AMPC provided seating design and tender information for both lecture auditoria: the refurbished 451-seat Kelvin Lecture Theatre, and a relocated council chamber forming the new 180-seat Turing Lecture Theatre. AMPC created integrated production lighting facilities in the Kelvin, collaborating with the in-house AV team to offer IET more flexible use of space. AMPC also designed the architectural lighting scheme to the interior front-of-house public spaces, and the exterior lighting scheme in collaboration with Pringle Richards Sharratt. This new lighting scheme firmly reclaims IET’s visual presence in the night time riverside cityscape of central London whilst achieving the highest BREEAM ratings.

IET’s new award-winning facilities at Savoy Place have increased the quality and quantity of its commercial bookings, becoming a prestigious London location for lectures, meetings, and events.