We've lost count of the number of times we've been brought into a project after construction documents are issued, only to discover that the ceiling plenum is too shallow for speakers, there's no conduit pathway to the display wall, and the architect specified a beautiful glass-and-steel conference room that will echo like a racquetball court.
None of this is the architect's fault. AV is a specialty discipline that doesn't get much coverage in architecture school, and the building technology landscape has changed dramatically in the last decade. Conference rooms aren't just tables and chairs anymore — they're networked technology environments with specific infrastructure requirements that affect structural, electrical, and acoustic decisions architects are making on day one.
This guide is what we wish every architect had before they start schematic design on a project with significant meeting space, collaboration areas, or public-facing AV systems.
Why AV Matters Earlier Than You Think
The most expensive AV problems are architectural problems. A display that needs to be mounted on a structural wall that wasn't reinforced. A ceiling speaker layout that conflicts with HVAC diffuser placement. A control room that wasn't accounted for in the space plan. These aren't AV failures — they're coordination failures, and they almost always trace back to AV being introduced too late in the design process.
In our experience, the cost of addressing AV requirements during schematic design is essentially zero — it's just information that informs decisions you're already making. The cost of addressing them during construction administration is 10-50x higher, because now you're modifying drawings, issuing change orders, and potentially reworking installed systems.
The rule of thumb we use: if a building will have more than five rooms with integrated AV technology, an AV consultant should be at the table during schematic design. Not to design the AV system yet — but to flag the architectural decisions that will constrain or enable AV performance later.
The Architectural Decisions That AV Depends On
Most architects are surprised by how many of their early design decisions directly affect AV outcomes. Here are the big ones:
Ceiling height and plenum depth. In-ceiling speakers, microphone arrays, and projectors all require plenum space. A Shure MXA920 ceiling microphone array, for example, needs a minimum of 2 inches above the ceiling tile for the device body, plus clearance for cabling and mounting hardware. Ceiling speakers from QSC or Biamp typically need 6-10 inches of plenum depth depending on the model. If the architect specifies a 9-foot finished ceiling with 12 inches of plenum in a space with significant HVAC ductwork, there may not be room for AV devices after mechanical, electrical, and fire protection systems claim their space.
The fix is straightforward: coordinate plenum allocation during schematic design. We typically recommend reserving a minimum of 12-14 inches of usable plenum space in rooms that will have ceiling-mounted AV equipment, and flagging any room where the structural depth limits total above-ceiling space to less than 18 inches.
Wall construction and backing. Large displays are heavy. A 98-inch commercial display weighs 150-200 pounds and needs structural backing — typically 3/4-inch plywood behind the drywall, secured to studs or steel framing. If the architect specifies a display wall without backing, the integrator discovers this during installation and the options are all bad: open the wall and add backing (expensive, messy), use a floor stand (ugly, takes up space), or mount to a different wall (which may not work for sight lines).
Similarly, interactive displays and video bars often require recessed conduit and junction boxes behind the mounting location. These need to be coordinated during the electrical rough-in, not after the walls are finished and painted.
Conduit pathways. AV systems need cable pathways between equipment locations — from the display wall to the credenza or rack where the room system lives, from the ceiling microphone to the network switch, from the floor box in the conference table to the wall plates. In commercial construction, these pathways are typically conduit or cable tray, and they need to be specified on the electrical drawings.
The most common miss we see: no conduit between the conference table location and the technology closet or credenza. Modern conference rooms almost always need connectivity at the table — for touch panels, table microphones, or cable cubby connections. If there's no floor box and no conduit path to the table location, you're left with surface-mounted raceways or cables running under carpet tiles. Neither is acceptable in a finished space.
Room geometry and sight lines. Display placement is driven by sight lines, which are driven by room geometry. The standard guidance for a flat-panel display: the bottom of the screen should be 36-48 inches above the finished floor, and the display size should ensure that the farthest viewer is no more than 8x the screen height away. For a 75-inch display (approximately 37-inch screen height), that means the farthest seat should be within about 25 feet.
In practice, this means the architect needs to think about display placement when laying out the furniture plan — not after. We've seen rooms where the only viable display wall is behind the presenter, or where a column blocks sight lines from half the seats, or where the room is so deep that a single display isn't adequate but there's no wall space for a second one.
Window placement and lighting. Windows are the enemy of display visibility. A conference room with floor-to-ceiling glass behind the display location will wash out the screen for most of the day. Automated shading helps but adds cost and complexity. The better solution is to position displays on interior walls and keep glazing on the sides or behind the viewers.
Lighting design matters too. Camera performance depends on even, front-facing illumination of the participants. A room with recessed downlights directly above the conference table creates harsh shadows under people's eyes and brows — flattering for nobody, and problematic for camera-based speaker tracking systems. Indirect or edge-lit lighting produces dramatically better results for video conferencing.
Acoustic Considerations Architects Can't Ignore
Acoustics is where architectural design and AV performance intersect most critically, and where we see the most expensive mistakes.
The fundamental metric is reverberation time (RT60) — how long it takes for sound to decay by 60 dB after the source stops. For a conference room used for video calls, the target is 0.4-0.6 seconds. For a training room or boardroom, 0.5-0.7 seconds. For a large multipurpose room or auditorium, it depends on the use case, but generally 0.8-1.2 seconds.
Here's what drives reverberation in architectural terms:
The practical implication for architects: specify acoustic treatment in the finish schedule for every room that will have AV systems. This doesn't mean covering every wall in fabric panels — it means working with the AV consultant or an acoustician to identify where absorption is needed and incorporating it into the design language of the room. Acoustic ceiling tiles, wall panels, even upholstered furniture all contribute to the acoustic environment.
We've worked on projects where the architect specified beautiful polished concrete floors, glass walls, and an exposed structure ceiling in a flagship boardroom. It looked stunning in the renderings. In reality, the RT60 was over 1.5 seconds and the microphone system couldn't distinguish between direct speech and reflected sound. The post-occupancy acoustic remediation cost more than the entire original AV system.
What to Expect from AV Consultants at Each Design Phase
Knowing when to involve AV and what deliverables to expect keeps the coordination productive:
Schematic Design. The AV consultant reviews floor plans and provides input on room layouts, display wall locations, conduit pathway concepts, and ceiling plenum requirements. Deliverable: a brief narrative describing AV intent for each room type, with notes on architectural constraints to watch. This takes days, not weeks, and costs very little relative to the project budget.
Design Development. The AV consultant produces preliminary AV drawings showing equipment locations, cable pathway routing, power and data requirements, and coordination notes for other trades. This is when the AV design gets overlaid on the architectural and MEP drawings to identify conflicts. Deliverable: floor plans with AV equipment locations, reflected ceiling plans showing speaker and microphone placement, and a preliminary equipment schedule.
Construction Documents. The AV consultant issues construction-level drawings and specifications. These include detailed wiring diagrams, rack elevations, control system programming narratives, and coordination details with electrical, mechanical, and low-voltage contractors. Deliverable: a full AV drawing set suitable for bidding and construction.
Construction Administration. The AV consultant reviews submittals, answers RFIs, conducts site visits to verify rough-in and installation quality, and performs final commissioning. This is where having the consultant involved from the beginning pays off — they can verify that what's being installed matches what was designed, and catch deviations before they become expensive problems.
Common Mistakes We See Architects Make
We're not pointing fingers — these are patterns we've seen across hundreds of projects, and they're almost always the result of AV being introduced too late rather than any architectural error.
Assuming flat-panel displays don't need infrastructure. "It's just a TV — hang it on the wall." A commercial display needs a dedicated 20-amp circuit, a network drop, an HDMI or HDBaseT connection back to the room system, structural wall backing, and often a recessed junction box. None of this is visible in the finished room, but all of it needs to be planned during construction.
Designing rooms around the table instead of the technology. The table is furniture. The camera, microphone, display, and network connectivity are infrastructure. When room layout starts with the table and treats technology as an accessory, the result is often a room where the camera can't see everyone, the microphone can't hear the far end, or the display is mounted so high that everyone stares at their laptops instead.
Specifying acoustically hostile finishes without compensation. We understand the aesthetic appeal of glass, concrete, and hard surfaces. We're not asking architects to line every room with carpet and acoustic foam. We're asking them to recognize that hard finishes require compensating acoustic treatment elsewhere in the room, and to include that treatment in the design rather than leaving it as a post-occupancy band-aid.
Undersizing technology closets. AV systems need rack space — typically 6-12 rack units per room for video processing, audio DSP, control systems, and network switches. A Crestron or Biamp DSP alone occupies 1-2 rack units and generates heat that needs ventilation. If the technology closet is an afterthought — a 3x3 closet with no cooling and one duplex outlet — it won't support the AV systems the building needs.
Forgetting about the back of house. Large meeting spaces, boardrooms, and auditoriums often need a dedicated equipment room or closet adjacent to the room. This space houses amplifiers, signal processors, recording equipment, and control system processors. It needs adequate power (often a dedicated 20-amp circuit per rack), cooling (AV equipment generates significant heat), and physical access for maintenance. Planning this space into the architecture from the beginning is straightforward. Retrofitting it after the fact ranges from difficult to impossible.
Power and Data: The Unsexy Essentials
Every AV device needs power and most need network connectivity. The details matter:
The electrical engineer needs this information during design development. The AV consultant should provide a power and data schedule that maps every device to a circuit and network drop, coordinated with the electrical drawings.
The ROI of Early AV Planning
We've been making the case throughout this article, but let's put some numbers to it. On a typical commercial construction project with 20-40 AV-equipped rooms:
The math is unambiguous. Early AV coordination isn't an added cost — it's insurance against change orders that cost an order of magnitude more.
Beyond the immediate project economics, buildings designed with proper AV infrastructure are more adaptable over their lifecycle. When the collaboration platform changes, or the display technology evolves, or the tenant changes their room configuration, the infrastructure — the conduit, the backing, the power, the acoustic treatment — is already in place. The technology refresh becomes a straightforward equipment swap instead of a renovation project.
Architects design buildings that last decades. The AV equipment in those buildings will be replaced three or four times over the building's life. The architectural infrastructure that supports that equipment — the pathways, the power, the acoustic environment — needs to be right from the beginning, because it's the one part you can't easily change later.