Nissan prides itself on rethinking the ordinary, pushing the boundaries, exceeding expectations and anticipating the needs of an ever-changing planet. Many of these principles were applied to the construction of the Nissan North America, Inc. headquarter campus in the Cool Springs area of Franklin, Tennessee.
Completed in 2008 the campus encompasses approximately 450,000 square feet, representing a capital investment of over $100 million. A ten-story building houses the corporate functions of sales‚ marketing, product planning‚ dealer operations‚ communications, finance, and legal departments.
One of the goals of the construction project was to realize operational synergies through cross-functional teamwork while offering employees the opportunity to grow both personally and professionally.
One of the considerations to help realize these goals was the construction of alternating atriums with open stairways on each of its nine main floors. This design element allows employees to walk from floor to floor, while also creating an atmosphere for spontaneous meetings in the stairway. The design also includes informal meeting areas.
Southern Business Communications, now Xerox Audio Visual Solutions was assigned with the responsibility for integrating all of the facilities’ audio visual needs. They were faced with the challenge of providing an integrated sound system into five individual rooms in the Conference Center as well as the main auditorium – the Infiniti Room. These rooms had to have the capabilities of handling the Executive Round Table meetings for senior management as well as standard meeting requirements requiring meeting participants to hear and be heard in their individual meeting spaces as well as through an elaborate video teleconferencing network. The application called for the system to be used for “stand alone” meetings as well as larger meetings where all rooms and functions needed to be combined.
Andy Upchurch, Director of Technical Services for Xerox selected a Listen Technologies Digital Conferencing system to meet these needs. Some of the factors in his decision were:
- The Digital Conferencing equipment provides a high quality sounding system
- The system allows intelligible meeting collaboration
- Using the mix minus built into the conferencing microphone stations eliminated back ground noise that was distracting and a problem to deal with when combining rooms
Other building amenities that were incorporated to support employees’ well being and comfort are a fitness center, cafeteria and ergonomic furnishings and an environmental approach to light, heating and air conditioning.