Women & Infants Hospital is the second largest obstetrical facility in New England, the tenth largest in the United States, and the primary teaching affiliate of the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University for obstetrics, gynecology and newborn pediatrics. The 140,000 square foot five-story addition to the hospital includes a first floor lobby; Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) areas on the 2nd and 3rd floors; obstetrics patient rooms on the 4th floor; a 4-section divisible space for small to large group meetings and presentations; and a conference room on each floor for small group meetings. As opposed to the large open bay Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs) of many existing facilities, this project was designed to provide private NICU rooms.

Acentech provided recommendations to achieve appropriate acoustical conditions for each of the spaces listed above. We provided recommendations for sound isolation and building system noise levels in the obstetrics rooms. We also provided recommendations for good listening conditions in the conference rooms.

Acentech’s audiovisual consultants designed a unique audiovisual system for the divisible space. As the four spaces can be configured in any combination, we designed to ensure that the system could accommodate different scenarios and support various events, even simultaneous ones. Our design includes a central location for common equipment that is used across all four spaces. This approach also yielded a streamlined system, which not only kept costs down by reusing equipment, instead of requiring four sets of everything, but also kept the systems easy to use and operate, resulting in a lower cost of ownership. Less equipment to maintain also makes it easy for the staff to use the system without the assistance of technical audiovisual staff.