The Gates Annex was  built nearly a century ago and is  among the oldest buildings on the Caltech campus. Today, it is treasured for its exquisite features both inside and out. The challenge for MCH was to substantially upgrade the acoustics and AV components of the Nobel Prize winning chemist’s historic Lecture Hall while conserving the building’s historic character and increasing seat count to 186.

Our scope included acoustically optimizing wall and ceiling shaping to permit clear intelligibility of  lecturers well as unamplified Q&A by all students irrespective of their seat location.  HVAC noise had been significant; we solved that even while re-using the existing, old air handler.  Footfall noise intrustion from the tiled floor library above and adjacent stairs was also fully mitigated.

Our AV involvement included designs for speech reinforcement, audio playback, ADA assisted listening, multimedia projection, archival recording, associated control systems and infrastructure. MCH was involved throughout the Design/Build process for this $3.6M renovation completed in 2020.

Reference:  James Azbel, Architect    805.379.2365

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