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By Alan Joch

Architects aren’t strangers to using consultants. Designers regularly employ specialists to nail down engineering, lighting, landscaping, and other important details in their projects. These days, architects are turning more frequently to a new type of consultant for the digital age—one that specializes in networking, telecommunications, and audio/visual (A/V) systems, as sophisticated communications technologies become essential elements in buildings.

The elevated role of communications consultants results from the increasing willingness of corporations, universities, health-care organizations, and others to embrace maturing technologies like videoconferencing and so-called “converged” networks, which merge data and voice traffic over a single digital infrastructure. These consultants don’t just handle phones anymore. Often, they have expertise in designing and installing data networks, video production, and sound and lighting systems that make it possible to view a discussion in a conference room in New York City from a location in Los Angeles or anywhere else in the world.

A niche with influence

Rather than outsiders who sign off on one element of a design, these specialists often have a lot of input on the look and feel of a project. “Five years ago, bringing in a [communications] consultant would have been an afterthought,” says Glenn Leitch, AIA, design director for the architecture firm Highland Associates in New York City. “Now it’s something standard that happens before design begins.”

In New Jersey, Chase Manhattan Bank’s ChemNetwork houses critical data in a single structure. The viewing gallery (not shown) lets visitors see some of the action. A video wall (at right above) keeps employees abreast of the latest headlines. Photography: © Walter Dufresne

The tie between communications technology and design is becoming so intimate, in fact, that sometimes technology is the design. Clients who want to look like leaders in their fields believe that high-tech touches like video screens and futuristic phones provide a symbolic aesthetic image, which opens up designers to new visual possibilities. “Technology can activate a space,” Leitch believes. “It’s becoming part of the design and gives us a new material to play with.”

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