Harvard Law School — Wasserstein Hall

Acentech partnered closely with the design team over the six years of design and construction, assisting with the acoustics and audiovisual system design for the facility.

The location of the building, at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Everett Street in Cambridge, MA, is an excellent showcase position for the school, but also introduced challenges to the acoustically sensitive interior spaces. Acentech recommended upgraded window assemblies in the seminar rooms which allow students sitting near the windows to hear the lecturer with little to no audible intrusion from the departing buses outside. The building also includes several team-based learning classrooms that Acentech’s acousticians designed to be exceptionally quiet rooms, thus allowing students and instructors to interact in small groups or in a traditional lecture format.

Acentech’s audiovisual system designers collaborated closely with the architects and university team to provide video and audio systems for the two team based learning or “cluster” classrooms, multiple tiered classroom, divisible multi-purpose rooms, seminar rooms, first floor pub, a garden courtyard and a centralized control facility with audio and video conferencing and capture technologies. These rich technology systems are designed to be flexible. For example, a media services technician in the control room may operate audiovisual equipment remotely or join together multiple classrooms for a single presentation.  Instructors may also control the single, dual, and triple projection systems within the classrooms.

Additionally, Acentech designed the AV systems to utilize asset management software to track the usage of the systems throughout the building and to schedule system maintenance.

Wasserstein Hall achieved LEED Gold certification.