Room XIX, United Nations Office at Geneva

Housed at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, the United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG) is the representative office of the Secretary-General at Geneva and serves as a focal point for multilateral diplomacy and advancing the agenda of the United Nations. Dignitaries and high-level delegations come to UNOG every year to participate in bilateral exchanges, summits, meetings and other events. Hosting over 8,000 meeting each year, UNOG is one of the busiest conference centers in the world. Room XIX is an 800-seat capacity conference room and the largest hall for plenary assemblies at UNOG.

In late 2018, an extensive upgrade of the room began, entirely financed by the State of Qatar. Following a year-long renovation led by architect Peia Associati in collaboration with Media Vision as the prime AV systems contractor, Room XIX reopened introducing a new conference hall equipped with state-of-the-art designs and advanced technology. 

Designed with architectural elements representing the natural beauty of Qatar, the new features of the updated conference hall include a circadian lighting system, 7,000 wooden eco-panels shaped by parametric software to manage the room’s acoustical frequencies and 10 simultaneous translation booths including one dedicated to interpreting sign language—a first in the world.

Highlighting the Room XIX renovation is a 9-meter-long, 5-meter-high (30-foot-long, 16-foot-high), Planar® TVF Series LED video wall with a 1.5mm pixel pitch (TVF1.5) .

The Planar TVF Series is a family of fine pitch LED video wall displays with a 16:9 aspect ratio that allows every pixel pitch to exactly achieve popular resolutions including Full HD and 4K. The Planar TVF Series features front serviceability and a creative stackable design that allows the video walls to be assembled like building blocks, eliminating cabinet-to-cabinet cabling and reducing the complexity of installation and vertical alignment. With a profile of less than three inches, the Planar TVF Series reduces the overall footprint and servicing space that is required, making the video walls easier to fit in more spaces compared to other LED video wall solutions. 

As the largest conference hall at UNOG for supporting intergovernmental assemblies and discussions of global significance, the Planar TVF Series LED video wall provides Room XIX with a dynamic visual technology solution for high impact presentations, live camera feeds and showing sign language interpreters, displayed through picture-in-picture. 

“The Planar TVF Series LED video wall offers unbelievably good resolution and excellent readability—even for Excel sheets 30 meters away from the screen,” said Jack De Keyser, VP Europe of Media Vision. “Planar’s engineers who came over from the U.S. were incredible. They completed the assembly and configuration of the video wall in difficult conditions due to construction work in the room. Our hats off to them.”

“Planar was a dependable partner for this project,” according to Media Vision President Annabelle Zabetian. “Room XIX has certainly been our most ambitious and challenging project since our European expansion in 2014, but also a real source of inspiration for future projects.”