Architecture student helps create "Halo" system during internship
M.Arch student Luis Infante is pictured here at the Space Needle in Seattle, Wash. Infante interned last summer at Callison, a Seattle-based architecture and design firm.
Article By: E. Christina Spitz
Published: April 28, 2008
Luis Infante, a fifth-year M.Arch candidate, has accepted a full-time offer to work as an associate at Callison, a Seattle, Wash.-based international architecture and design firm specializing in corporate, entertainment, healthcare and residential architecture and design.
The job offer came after Infante spent three months last summer as an intern at the company. He was one of three students selected for the internship and earned a $4,000 scholarship.
The project he worked on, the is revolutionizing the way business is conducted around the world.
The Halo is a first-of-its-kind video conferencing system that allows participants to simulate face-to-face meetings across long distance, according to the Callison Web site. Its technology, created by Hewlett Packard, includes three flat screen televisions and three cameras placed at specific angles. There is a conference table shaped as a half ellipse. When the conference is taking place and the two rooms are online, the television screens make it look like the two half ellipses of the two rooms are actually one. The result is a seamless conference room between two remote locations. Microphones and speakers are strategically located so that one can hear the voice of the speaker from anywhere.
There is also a fourth camera and screen that is called the “collaboration screen.” This camera on the ceiling reads documents and objects placed on the center of the table. “The camera zooms so much that is able to pick up things as small as the logo of a pill,” Infante said. “Because of this, the architecture and engineering have to create a virtually sterile space, free of even the slightest background noise or vibration.”
Callison is in charge of all design, acoustics, materials—all but the technology. Infante was responsible for preliminary space planning, room modeling and creating graphics.
He will begin working at Callison in July, after he graduates from SCAD. “I think SCAD is a very progressive school, and most of the things we are taught prepare us for a greater position in architecture in the future … I hope to keep broadening my horizons within the architecture field and to take advantage of all of Callison’s great resources to keep educating myself.”
“Halo” clients include DreamWorks, Shell, Nokia, Diageo and others.
