From the March 2008 SCN archives, Waveguide CEO Scott Walker reminds us why AV spaces should have natural light and how to do it right.
“If you came of age in the AV industry during the 1970s, ’80s or ’90s, you knew for certain there was one sworn enemy of all AV systems: the sun. As an industry we did all we could to control ambient light on our projected images in the hopes of obtaining sufficient contrast from our lumen-challenged projectors. And the easiest thing to do was recommend to the architect that all classrooms and conference rooms be windowless. If this was not architecturally feasible, we requested blackout shades we could lower automatically any time AV was being used (which in today’s college classrooms is nearly all the time.) Thus, we set about putting students and conferees into sunlight-starved caves for days, weeks, years on end where they could be properly induced into a zombie-like state…”