SHEBOYGAN, WI — As part of a massive, multi-year corporate headquarters expansion here, Acuity Insurance is building a 2,000-capacity in-the-round theater. Along with a steep rake to the seating plan, the venue features multi-panel LED curved displays that make use of NanoLumens video screens.
More details from Nanolumens (www.NanoLumens.com):
American ingenuity, the unique ability to apply creative thinking to overcome the most challenging hurdles to success, is something that NanoLumens applies to every one of its installation projects. Recently, this ability was put to a major test when the company was tasked with designing a visually powerful display solution for Acuity Insurance’s new campus theater.
“The United States offers more opportunities to more businesses than any nation on earth and our employees work tirelessly to help enable these businesses to achieve their biggest dreams,” President & CEO Ben Salzmann explained. “Keeping our employees motivated and informed is key to our continued success, so we created this new theater to help make that happen through quarterly employee town-hall meetings and smaller on-going group meetings and presentations held regularly throughout the year.”
Incorporating jumbotron sized video walls into the new 2,000-seat theater posed a serious challenge because the two-level theater is circular and the seats are installed in a shockingly vertical manner in a 65-foot radius from the stage. “People who enter the theater for the first time gasp because it is most unusual to see so many seats arranged in such a vertical manner in a radius that is so close to the stage,” Salzmann emphasized. “It delivers the impact we were hoping to create.”
To complete the impact, however, required a display solution that would enable every seat in the theater to have a clear view of the stage no matter where the seat was located. In addition, the total weight of the solution had to fall below a certain limit in order to conform to the architecture of the building ceiling. Acuity Vice President – Services and Administration Sheri Murphy added, “With this circular set-up, we determined that part of the audience would always be looking at the speaker’s back side. This reality created the need for the multi-panel LED curved displays that could be seen clearly and vividly from the front from every seat in the theater, regardless of the location.”
The question was who could conceive of and then design and engineer the exact solution that would meet the requirements of the space — and that’s where NanoLumens came in to the picture, thanks to Acoustics by Design, the company responsible for developing the new theater’s entire advanced audiovisual system, and Camera Corner Connecting Point, the company responsible for installing whatever display solution was selected.
“We went through a long process discussing the digital displays,” Acoustic by Design Senior Audio Visual Consultant Tim Hamilton stated. “Since Acuity didn’t have a space like this currently, we explored many different technologies, everything from LED to projection technology. It was a tough challenge to ensure that the display solution met the vision of the Acuity team and resonated well with each audience.” After selecting LED technology as the way to go, Acuity, Acoustics by Design and Camera Corner Connecting Point selected NanoLumens because they were the only company that could meet the unique challenges presented by the space. “We wanted something that would be clean looking from an installation perspective and offer the brightness and resolution that the client’s content on the screen was going to require,” Hamilton continued. “NanoLumens created a stunning solution that worked for everyone involved in the project.”
The solution created by NanoLumens is a breathtaking five-sided pentagon 3mm NanoSlim LED display solution that literally galvanizes the attention of everyone who sits in the new theater. Each of the five curved displays measures 10’H X 6.5’W and is joined together to create a single pentagon shaped structure that hangs suspended from the ceiling over the theater’s central stage. The pentagon measures 16’ across the center and weighs a total of 3,600 pounds, including the winch. The calculated weight of the displays is only 1,900 pounds.
“We had a very specific weight limit that we had to stay under when designing the display solution,” Camera Corner Audio Visual Systems Consultant Scott Tomashek emphasized. “The NanoLumens team demonstrated their value by creating a superior solution that came in under the maximum weight limit.
As critical as the NanoLumens LED displays are to the new theater’s success, a 10 Danley speaker sound system with one large subwoofer and a six-camera video system to track speakers from every angle complete the technology package. “We made every effort to ensure that the visual sightlines and audio clarity were second-to-none,” Salzmann concluded. “The combination of the NanoLumens displays with the audiovisual system results in a solution that will help us to better connect with, inform and motivate our employees.”
According to NanoLumens Regional Sales Manager Ryan Wilhelm, the success of the project is a credit to every member of the team, each of whom contributed their very best ideas to design a solution that delivers an unprecedented visual impact in a structure that weighs less than the maximum weight restriction. “We wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer,” Wilhelm laughed. “Every time we faced a design or weight challenge, we just put our minds to it and started from scratch to create a solution that would work. If that’s not American ingenuity in action, then I don’t know what is!”
Acuity Insurance is a classic American success story that celebrates and supports the value of American ingenuity every day in the service of its large base of American clients. Founded in 1925, the country’s 57th largest insurance provider credits its success to its 1,200 employees and to the United States of America, which creates a wealth of business opportunities for the clients it serves.
