Wallis Annenberg Hall pairs beauty and functionality.

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After years of planning and design, Wallis Annenberg Hall was officially opened Wednesday in a ceremony attended by several hundred and Wallis Annenberg herself. The building is home to the Annenberg School of Communications and Journalism, a highly regarded media education programs.

The new building is about as technologically advanced as they come, with professional-level equipment and facilities for each of the school’s media outlets. Architecture and technology teams collaborated to create an integrated and multi-functional space that would allow students to work together.

The biggest challenges these teams faced, according to Director of Multimedia Technologies of the Annenberg School Chuck Boyle, was delegating space to each media outlet. Creative solutions including a collaborative news desk and a rotating podcast/vidcast stage have turned the new facility into a space made to multitask. Boyle aimed to create a space that was both beautiful and functional.

Stephen Sutter, one of the technology supervisors in the design of the new building, is responsible for the striking media wall that stands three stories tall in the center of the space. What once began as an idea for a low-resolution projection wall morphed into a massive high-resolution wall of screens that features student work and what Sutter calls “architectural color.”

The new building presents students of the Annenberg School with both a gift and a challenge- in the years that come, what will we produce, create, and write here?