The main terminal building's large, curved roof stretches 400m over the length of the facility, and uses acres of glass to both bring in natural light and emphasize the impressive scale of the structure, which has become a national symbol in Uruguay. As much attention to detail was given to the technologies at work inside the airport as to the building itself, and design/installation contractors Promusica rose to the task with state-of-the-art mass notification and life safety communications systems from Bosch Public Address and Electro-Voice, both from the Bosch Security Systems family of pro audio brands.
"Promusica did an exceptional job designing and installing these systems," says Juan Montoya of Bosch, "which can handle everything from routine paging through to emergency notification - all with the highest level of reliability and speech intelligibility." Promusica worked together with Bosch system engineers to precisely address rigorous international airport standards with an extensive Bosch/EV equipment list, including Bosch Praesideo public address systems.
A digital system for public address and emergency notification, Praesideo employs optical fibre for communication and offers interference-free audio along with a high level of redundancy. The system is fully programmable and compatible with other security systems, including fire detectors, warning and emergency systems. Simple to set up and modify either locally or remotely, a typical Praesideo system is designed in the form of a combination network cable and fibre ring.
"While this architectural environment is very easy on the eye, it is not so friendly from an acoustical perspective," Montoya adds. "The software-based audio simulations and acoustic research confirmed the typical challenges posed by glass, granite and high reflective ceilings, where high levels of RT60 are the norm. We were able to select products that met these challenges.
"More than 1500 Electro-Voice loudspeakers, including EVID C8.2HC high ceiling models and EV 205 4" ceiling speakers, were installed."
(Jim Evans)
