Renaissance Square

Owners of Renaissance Square, Downtown Phoenix’s iconic office towers at 2nd and 40th N. Central Avenue, engaged Hines Project & Property Management to lead the complete re-imagination of the nearly one million square foot Class A property.

The ownership group is headed up by Cypress Office Properties, LLC. Due to our experience with unique applications of video wall technology, Hines engaged Level 3 Audiovisual to design a video wall within a living wall (a unique merger of technology and nature). As a result of close coordination with RSP Architects and Plant Solutions, we designed a solution to accommodate both plant growth and operating video wall monitors in a wet environment.

A growing trend in multi-tenant towers like Renaissance Square is to reimagine lobbies as a tenant amenity rather than just a tenant path to the elevators. The tired pink-granite circa 1980’s lobbies received a major facelift to attract and retain tenants. Mixing lobby uses via technology not only helps attract and retain tenants, it will make Renaissance Square more competitive with new towers in the CBD like City Scape. This modernization was a selling point to retain tenants like GPEC (Greater Phoenix Economic Council), also a Level 3 Audiovisual Client.

Workplace mobility is transforming the way employees use and view the office, but what does that mean for designers tasked with creating next-generation spaces? Level 3 Audiovisual suggests utilizing video wall technology to create uniquely shaped digital canvases for delivering Renaissance Square branding and digital signage content. With thoughtful coordination with the interior designer, RSP, and the client, Hines, the design team landed on three monitor configurations for the Renaissance I and Renaissance II lobbies. The Monitor Configurations include:

• 2×2 55” Video Wall: features 55” Samsung ultra-slim video wall monitors with custom digital content & living wall content.
• Digital Living Wall: Engineered using water-resistant technology, GFCI protection, and an adjustable mounting system to accommodate plant growth. Level 3 Audiovisual Engineers extensively coordinated the content mix to include: organic & nature video scenes, area happenings, building happenings & video content.
• Digital Building Directories: Features two 46” TouchSource ADA height compliant digital tenant directories for the nearly 970,000 sqft complex. The touch – digital directories feature Tenant List, Ren Square Building Info/Amenities, Upcoming Event Announcements, Leasing Contact – Lee & Associates and Building Leasing/Management Contact – Hines.

Custom content development for the Video Wall and Digital Living Wall was handled by the premier brand specialists – Industry Weapon. The content delivery network utilized for the video walls had to support enterprise-grade remote access and content management for both video walls from a single interface. The ability to develop, mockup, preview and deliver content to any of the digital signage enabled displays/video walls, easily and quickly, was paramount in enabling the creative teams to focus on building a cohesive and consistent look and feel for Renaissance Square Brand.

The digital signage and content management platform was a critical decision given the unique set of requirements. The challenge – design an easy to use enterprise content delivery system. The solution was an all in one product featuring: custom video wall graphics, HD video clips and the ability to integrate social media and live data. Content includes Organic-Nature Scenes, Cable TV, Downtown Phoenix Partnership Events Calendar, Ren Square Events Calendar and Food Truck Schedule. All this custom, always changing content is “pushed” via a BrightSign cloud subscription-based content management system and delivered to BrightSign players at the video walls.

Audio is distributed throughout the lobbies utilizing ElectroVoice loudspeakers strategically mounted out-of-view, in the 30-foot ceiling soffits. Background Music (BGM) is provided for ambiance during normal operating hours. Licensed BGM is scheduled and controlled via the Mood Media app in the Hines Management Office.

All of the systems are easily controlled by a Hines PC featuring a custom GUI (graphical user interface), giving master-control to property management. The interface shows all display locations on the floorplan of the Ren 1 Lobby, enabling a user to quickly orient where they are in the system, and make desired changes (change Cable TV channels, assign digital signage content to displays and update digital signage content). Control presets allow a user to configure all displays and a “typical” configuration and then save it as a system-wide preset. This allows a user to quickly set up the entire system to a known configuration without having to access each individual display and BrightSign digital signage player.

Cutting edge technology, an easy-to-use interface, and an updateable user experience ensured that the Ren Square Lobby Modernization delivered on their vision of a merging nature and technology.