Scarborough Chinese Baptist Church

This Church won Teeple Architects a Governor General’s Award for Architecture and an Ontario Association of Architects Award for Excellence. The guiding principles for the AV technology were that it should be flexible, fully networked, easy to use, and future-compatible.

The asymmetrical architecture and high ceilings posed interesting challenges for the audio and video design.  Novita calculated ideal image sizes for the video projections and carefully coordinated placement of the images so that they would not be distorted.

The placement of choir microphones also posed a challenge: if they were hung from the 30′ ceiling, the wires would have cast shadows on the projections. This was solved by placing the microphones on boom arms.

The audio systems need to accommodate both the spoken word and music, requirements which can often conflict: the spoken word requires clarity (little reverberation), while music requires richness
(reverberation). Equipment and speaker selection and placement were important considerations to overcome these challenges.

The Church provided a robust IT backbone for the building. Novita provided a highly networked solution allowing events in the Sanctuary to be captured and streamed to any computer on the network. This allows the Chapel to be used as an overflow space for large events.

The digital AV network allows for multiple mix locations. Novita ensured the main mix location is backed up with an analog snake for signal distribution.