On the Southwest outskirts of Amsterdam, a building previously used by the Dutch postal service and IBM found itself the star attraction in a competition to determine its best future use.
Organised by owner Bas van Veggel, the building – five-stories tall and some distance from the heart of Amsterdam but close to Schipol airport – saw Ricardo van Loenen and Guus Meulendijks proposed rented office and work space to small enterprises and sole traders with small budgets – complete with facilities to supply food, drink and office ‘essentials’ at low cost and with areas to host events and meetings.
With the motto ‘Relax Meet Work Create Think’ displayed prominently over the main entrance, B.Amsterdam had an immediate requirement for A/V facilities, prompting Harmen van ’t Loo of Yamaha Commercial Audio dealer Motiondezign join the creative team. Now co-owner of the Events department at B.Amsterdam, he is responsible for all A/V-related activities and the associated equipment.
Harmen is progressively installing Yamaha audio equipment throughout the building. So far this includes 12 DXR10 loudspeakers, two DXS15 subs, an MTX5-D matrix mixer, QL1 digital mixing console, Rio1608-D I/O unit, EXo8 output expander and DCP1V4S wall-mounted control panel in a meeting area on the ground floor and 10 pairs of VXS5W loudspeakers, each with an MA2030 compact mixer amplifier, in meeting rooms.
The ground floor meeting area allows up to 1,000 seats to be arranged in different configurations. The requirements of almost every event are unique, so it is designed to be flexible. Harmen flew the DXR10 loudspeakers (chosen because of their excellence for speech applications) in a matrix from the ceiling. Controlled by the MTX5 and configured so they can be quickly orientated at different angles, this configuration allows only the speakers needed to cover a specific event to be in use.
‘The QL1 is installed at a fixed mix position and users love its Dugan auto mixer, which really helps with the difficult room acoustics,’ he says. ‘The MTX5 is controlled remotely via a laptop next to the QL1, making for a very flexible and efficient control solution. B.Amsterdam also features many small break-out rooms, which are used for meetings and presentations. We found the MA2030 mixer amplifier and VXC5 speakers were excellent for the basic audio needs in those rooms, whose inputs are usually no more than a microphone and a laptop. The functionality is foolproof, they sound good and users are very happy with them.’
Currently the building houses around 200 enterprises, from sole traders to around 20 people strong. More than 1,000 people use the building daily, a number, which is growing rapidly. Ironically, the creative atmosphere that pervades the building has proved attractive to IBM, which has returned to base a small team there. ‘It has proved a very successful project and, as the building becomes ever-more popular, the A/V budget is growing exponentially,’ says Harmen. ‘Yamaha has great solutions for the building’s growing audio demands and we are currently preparing to install a large Dante network throughout the building for more demanding audio applications. We will also be equipping more meeting rooms and presentation areas with Yamaha audio equipment in the near future.’
As a first phase, he recently installed two pairs of VXS8 and six DXR8 loudspeakers, plus a Dante-enabled XMV4280-D power amplifier, in additional areas.
