Canaccord Genuity (Australia) is a leading independent global financial services firm, providing wealth management and capital markets services to private clients, institutions, and corporate clients across Australia and internationally.
The Challenge
As part of its Melbourne office fit-out at 101 Collins, Canaccord Genuity set out to create a suite of premium meeting spaces built for modern hybrid collaboration.
While the project included multiple meeting rooms of varying sizes and technical complexity, one space in particular presented a unique challenge. Designed as a secondary executive meeting room for high-value client and stakeholder discussions, the room needed to go well beyond a conventional video conferencing experience.
The client’s goal was simple: meetings that felt as close as possible to being physically face-to-face, even for people joining remotely. That meant warmth, presence and natural interaction from the far end of a call, while staying easy and flexible for everyday use.
In addition, the room had to support both Zoom and Microsoft Teams equally, without favouring one platform over the other, and still work as a traditional video conferencing space when required.
What AV Projects delivered
We designed and delivered an audiovisual system tailored to both the architecture and the way the space would be used for high-value client engagement.
Central to the design was the use of customised Arthur Holm motorised desk-mounted displays, each integrating a camera and retractable microphone. Under control-system automation, the screens and microphones rise smoothly from the table when required and drop away afterwards, keeping the room’s clean, executive look.
Hearing augmentation was built into the core design, so the space is accessible to all participants without affecting performance or the visual design.
Using video switching driven by real-time speech detection, the system automatically selects the active speaker’s camera feed. This creates a far-end experience that closely mirrors natural eye contact and conversational flow, moving away from the static, room-wide shots typical of traditional video conferencing. During extended periods of silence, such as when participants are listening to remote speakers, the system transitions to a wider view of the room, maintaining context and visual balance.
The system supports both Zoom and Microsoft Teams, plus wireless content sharing, with a consistent experience whatever the platform or use case.
We ran this as a single job from design through to commissioning. Working to the architects’ drawings, we set out the equipment racks and cabling in the communications room, built the motorised displays and retractable microphones into a custom desk, and integrated the control, camera switching and conferencing so the room behaves the same way on every booking – whether the meeting runs on Zoom or on Microsoft Teams. Delivering it this way, the technology was built into the space rather than retrofitted, and matched the architectural intent.
Throughout, we stayed close to the client to make sure the technology made the room easier to use, not harder.
The Results
The finished room has had a strong response from staff and clients alike, and has quickly become one of the most heavily used meeting rooms in the Melbourne office – regularly chosen for high-value meetings where presence, connection and professionalism matter.
According to Arthur Holm, this was the first deployment of its kind in the Australian finance sector, applying advanced conferencing technology more commonly found in government and international institutions. The result is a polished meeting environment that raises the bar for hybrid client engagement.
