Capital Cultural Hall, Kohima.
- Kohima, Nagaland
- Handover 2022
- SmartCity Development
- 1,800-seat performance auditorium
· The brief
What we were
asked to deliver.
An 1,800-seat civic auditorium engineered for live cultural performance, public address, recorded music and government convocation — delivered as a coordinated build covering pro audio, active LED, stage lighting, stage furnishing, acoustics and chair installation across the entire house.
· Engagement note
The kind of building
this actually is.
A government brief is rarely a brief about technology. It is a brief about the operating reality the building will inhabit on its busiest day — the rota, the audit, the inspection, the regulator, the family, the night shift. We engineer to that day, not to a brochure. The systems below were designed against the worst-case load and tuned to feel effortless against it for everyday use.
On a project of this type, the discipline is in the seams: where the cause-and-effect from one panel has to read cleanly into another, where the cabling pathway is shared by three trades, where the commissioning calendar needs to clear before the operator’s calendar opens. We hold all of that under one contract — design through commissioning — so that when something is asked of the building three years from now, there is one accountable hand to ask.
The scope below is the measurable output. The unwritten output is a documentation pack the operator can hand to a successor without losing a year of institutional knowledge.
· What we delivered
7 disciplines,
one contract.
A single integrated stack — design, procurement, installation, commissioning and AMC by a single accountable contractor. Each line carries its own drawing pack, cause-and-effect and commissioning sign-off.
- Pro audio — JBL VLA line array with Crown amplification and BSS BLU100 DSP
- Soundcraft Si Impact digital mixing console + AKG microphones
- 40 sqm P3.9 LED video wall with HDMI switching and distribution
- Stage lighting on DMX — moving head, PAR, profile and blinder fixtures
- Fabric, wooden and ceiling acoustic treatment
- Motorised stage curtains, fire alarm + hydrant systems, VRV HVAC plant
- Approximately 2,000 audience seats with row and seat-number labelling
· Systems integrated
The named systems,
not the trade-list.
Each system was engineered as a coordinated layer — its own controllers, commissioning report and AMC inclusion — and stitched into the cause-and-effect that runs across all of them.
- JBL VLA-series line-array loudspeakers with Crown DCI network amplifiers
- BSS BLU100 DSP processor + Soundcraft Si Impact digital mixing console
- AKG microphone complement (lectern, choir, lavalier)
- 40 sqm LED video wall, P3.9 pixel pitch, with HDMI switching backbone and 49" / 65" reference panels
- DMX-controlled stage lighting rig — moving head, PAR, profile and blinder fixtures
- Fabric, wooden and ceiling acoustic treatment to RT60 and STI targets
- Motorised stage curtain system, fire-alarm and fire-hydrant networks, VRV HVAC plant
- Approximately 2,000 audience seats with row and seat-number labelling
· Engineering challenges solved
The hard problems,
not the press release.
Below is what actually had to be engineered through — written by the team that solved each one, not by the team that wrote the brochure.
- 01
Delivering speech intelligibility (STI ≥ 0.58) across 1,800 seats without over-damping the room for music programme — solved by fluid acoustic treatment rather than panel-only, with variable-density absorption per audience zone, calibrated bass-trap volume in the corners, and adaptive diffusion at the rear.
- 02
Designing a line-array hang that covers the audience plane evenly without hot-spotting the front rows — line-array DSP shading was used to deliver flat coverage from row A to row Z, measured at every twentieth seat at commissioning.
- 03
Tuning the LED video wall's brightness so the backdrop reads cleanly under stage lighting without visually competing with the performers — colour temperature and luminance targets were locked against measured stage-lighting illuminance, not against catalogue defaults.
- 04
Routing DMX/Art-Net lighting control across the stage and the architectural envelope without cross-talk — separated VLANs and physical-layer isolation were specified on the lighting control network so a stage cue does not flicker the lobby.
- 05
Working in the auditorium's high-altitude (1,440 m) climate — equipment specifications factored in altitude effects on amplifier cooling and battery chemistry, with derated capacity calculated rather than catalogue-assumed.
· Integration summary
How the disciplines
were stitched.
The auditorium's six trades — pro audio, video, lighting, drapery, acoustics and seating — were engineered as one coordinated cause-and-effect, not six separate contracts with seams in between. Line-array DSP shading is calculated against the room's measured RT60. LED-wall luminance is set against measured stage-lighting illuminance. DMX/Art-Net runs on isolated VLANs so a stage cue cannot flicker an architectural fixture. Acoustic treatment is fluid — variable-density absorption, calibrated bass-traps, adaptive diffusion — and signed off on a measured impulse test rather than a panel-coverage spreadsheet.
· Operational impact
What changed for the
day-two team.
A handover is not a milestone — it is the day the operations team starts running the building without us. These are the changes they inherit.
- STI 0.64 mean (0.58 minimum) measured across the audience plane — speech intelligibility delivered to civic-speech standard at every seat.
- RT60 curve tuned to a slight rising profile (1.6 s at 125 Hz, 1.4 s at 1 kHz, 1.2 s at 4 kHz) — the room reads as 'warm but clear' for music and 'present' for spoken word.
- One coordinated commissioning report — pro audio, video, lighting, acoustic and seating signed off as a single integrated package, not six separate trades.
- Active AMC engagement post-handover — the hall remains an operating engagement, not a project that closed.
· Standards & compliance context
The codes the work
was held to.
Each standard is the framework an inspector or auditor would check our work against. Deliverables sized to satisfy each one in writing, not in conversation.
- ISO 3382-1 — measurement of room acoustic parameters in performance spaces
- AES-15id — sound system design for speech intelligibility
- IEC 60849 / IS 16102 — sound systems for emergency purposes (PA overlay)
- DMX-512 / Art-Net — entertainment lighting control protocols
- IS 8758 / NBC 2016 — fire and life-safety for assembly occupancies
· Brand stack
Specified for the project,
not the brochure.
Each brand was chosen for the project’s specific requirements; no partnership volume influenced the recommendation. Click any brand to visit the manufacturer’s official site.
· Documentation handed over
What our client received
on day one.
As-built architectural-coordination drawings
Single-line diagrams + panel schedules
Rack and patch labelling schedules
Controller configuration files (offline baseline)
Calibration reports for AV and life-safety
Cause-and-effect matrix (signed by AHJ)
Software-licence registers
AMC enrolment with response SLA
Operations manual in plain English
· Why it mattered
A building is not commissioned on the day the contractor leaves. It is commissioned on the first ordinary morning the operators run it without us in the room.
We design every project with that morning in mind — the panel labelled in the operator’s own language, the documentation legible to a successor we will never meet, the AMC programme already calendared, the spares already in our Lachit Nagar office. A government engagement of this scale is judged not on handover day but in year three. That is the standard the brief was held to.
/ On site
A frame from the engagement.
Photographs from the working installation. Permitted by the client; published with redactions where the brief required.
· Systems used on this project
Read the systems,
in depth.
Each linked service page goes deeper than this case study — capabilities, integration logic, failure scenarios, FAQs and the codes the work is engineered to.
Auditoriums & Boardrooms
Rooms that begin on time.
Read the serviceELVProfessional Audio & PA Systems
Intelligible, every seat in the house.
Read the serviceAVStage Lighting
Light that performs.
Read the serviceAVAcoustic Solutions
Rooms that sound the way they look.
Read the serviceAVLED Panels & Projectors
The right pixels for the room.
Read the service· Explore similar systems
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the same disciplines.
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· Where this work sits
Kohima,
in our practice.
Active service area in Kohima, supported by our Dimapur GST registration.
Read our Kohima practice· Reference walkthrough
With the host’s permission,
we’ll arrange a site visit.
Brochures and CGI tours teach you nothing about how a system actually feels. For serious enquiries we facilitate site visits to active deployments — typically within a week of request, subject to the host’s availability.