NEW YORK, NY
2019
CNN’s Hudson Yards studio 19X is home to The Van Jones Show and is additionally designed with the capacity to accommodate special features such as town hall events. Conceptualized as a reconfigurable kit of parts, the set features tracking LED walls, mobile monitor stacks, a platform with optional extensions, a variety of audience riser segments, and height-adjustable ceiling elements. The sum of these parts is a completely transformable, versatile, and scalable studio.
Van Jones’ primary look places the host and his guest on a central, circular LED platform, surrounded by 270° of audience seating. LED walls are positioned on an inner, oval-shaped track to define the content-rich yet intimately scaled perimeter. Monitor stacks display more focused discussion topics, and a collection of cleanly lit, rounded rectangular frames suggest a ceiling plane.
Adapting to a town hall setting for a moderator and multiple speakers involves adding lightbox corner pieces or supplemental runways to extend the platform. The studio itself seems to grow as perimeter LED screens are shifted to the outer, rectangular track, and audience risers are added and reconfigured as required. To complete the transformation, curved graphic lightboxes are lowered from the grid to replace the rectangular ceiling frames.
