Prior to this ambitious project, Birkbeck's teaching estate was inconsistent and unreliable in places. Dr Ken Hori, Head of Education and Student Experience in the Faculty of Business and Law, explains how workarounds were found: "I used to use my own camera and a tripod to live stream [sessions]. I'm so grateful that the college has now put in all this technology in every lecture room – it’s made my life so much easier."

While aiming to be consistent between rooms, the estate also had to serve two distinct groups of users. Birkbeck's spaces are booked by external institutions during the daytime, meaning any solution needed to work for a visiting lecturer who had never seen the system before - as well as for Birkbeck's own staff running full HyFlex sessions in the evening. Delivering a consistent standard at this scale across spaces of varying age and size was a significant logistical undertaking, particularly on a live campus.

Kayleigh Woods Harley, Project Manager at Birkbeck, coordinated delivery across multiple internal departments. "Trying to achieve the same standard across the board was a key commitment. We have had to adapt in certain ways, whether the screens move up and down or have to be fixed because of limited ceiling height, but we worked around all of these to make sure that the students don't notice the difference."

To accommodate the two distinct groups of users, GVAV developed a bespoke control GUI within an Extron control panel that presents a clean, minimal interface for daytime visitors, getting them connected and presenting within moments of walking in, while the full HyFlex functionality is available to Birkbeck's own staff for evening sessions. While room size and layout dictated screen size and the number of microphones, every room has been designed to deliver the same function with the same user experience.

Each of the HyFlex-enabled rooms features a bespoke TOP-TEC lectern housing three iiyama displays, giving the lecturer a clear view of their content, the remote participants, and the room. At the front of each room, dual ViewSonic large interactive displays provide the primary teaching surface, while a rear confidence screen keeps the lecturer oriented without having to turn their back on the room.

The ViewSonic IFP33 Series displays were chosen for their interactive features. Annotating and responding to content in real time are central to how fluid HyFlex sessions now run at Birkbeck. These displays are mounted on height-adjustable Neomounts wall mounts for full accessibility.

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Sessions are delivered through Birkbeck's existing Panopto and Microsoft Teams infrastructure, meaning the technology in the room integrates with platforms staff and students are already familiar with. Panopto handles recording and catch-up for students who cannot attend live, while Teams manages live hybrid sessions. The AV infrastructure was designed to ensure that the shift from a standard classroom to a fully functioning HyFlex session requires no additional steps from the lecturer.

Key parts of the system are programmed to power down when occupancy sensors determine the space to be empty, reducing unnecessary energy consumption across the estate. With more than 80 spaces running different schedules throughout the day and evening, the energy saving this delivers is materially furthering the University’s sustainability goals.

The lecture theatres have been designed to feel like part of the same ecosystem as the teaching rooms, with a coherent, consistent user experience from its smallest seminar rooms to its largest lecture theatres.

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Verona is Sony's most advanced Crystal LED product, designed specifically for the demands of virtual production. GVAV worked closely with Sony directly on the requirement for this centrepiece display, resulting in a Sony specialist travelling from Japan to review the proposal. Following the visit, based on feedback from GVAV’s Technical Team and the requirement to support front service access, the Verona product was formally reclassified, making it practical for a teaching environment where rear access to the wall would not always be possible.

HTC Vive Mars real-time camera tracking has been integrated so students can produce content with dynamic virtual backgrounds that respond to camera movement, the kind of capability previously found only in professional broadcast environments.

A Barco E3 events server drives the wall, with an AVer TR615 camera handling image capture, Shure MXA920 ceiling microphone arrays and Genelec studio monitors managing audio, and JBL AC26 loudspeakers providing audio into the room. Mersive wireless sharing supports collaborative and active learning workflows within the space. A Vari-Lite Rigswitch provides lighting control, while a Gude PDU manages power distribution across the suite. Occupancy sensors built into the system trigger the LED wall and lighting rig to fully power down automatically when the space is unoccupied, a practical, cost benefit and sustainable measure for a high-draw system.

A dedicated podcast studio, post-production workspace and a high-performance AI computing lab are also based within CCAI, giving students in media, computing, and AI disciplines access to professional-grade facilities that were not available at Birkbeck before this project.

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Sustainability, reliability and accessibility as standard

Before any equipment was specified, GVAV worked with manufacturers and suppliers to provide data for key system components and worked with Birkbeck to model the true total cost of ownership for the full solution. This included power consumption statistics for the proposed equipment and system configurations, giving the client a clear picture of running costs alongside capital expenditure.

Alongside performance, each product has been selected with longevity, reliability and efficiency in mind. For a deployment of this scale, the difference between a low and a high-efficiency specification becomes significant over time. Features built into the system as standard, such as automatically powering down certain equipment when not in use, have a direct impact on the energy efficiency of the estate and longevity of the products. Reliability of the system was a key consideration to reduce technical support requirements, with rooms running daytime and evening sessions five days a week.

Kayleigh Woods Harley reflects on the partnership: "Working with GVAV was really a collaborative experience. They've been involved from the very beginning, helping us choose the right solution for us and for our students. They've really been an integral part of the whole process."

Birkbeck's commitment to inclusive education also runs through the specification of every room. Each HyFlex space includes a fully accessible control panel, height-adjustable Neomounts display brackets, and a Williams AV assistive listening system, ensuring that the learning experience is genuinely accessible to all students.

These features are part of the standard specification across all spaces, reflecting the commitment with which Birkbeck approach inclusivity and accessibility across the campus.

As a result of the investment in this ambitious programme, Birkbeck now has one of the most extensive and consistent HyFlex estates of any UK university, as well as an updated portfolio of new, creative, accessible spaces.

Consistent standards have been applied across every space. From the technology choices to the GUI design, the accessibility provision, and the control logic - each part of the system has been developed to create a coherent, familiar, and intuitive user experience across the estate. This project establishes both a new teaching standard, as well as a technical standard that will carry forward into future spaces.