This weekend was the 181st Annual General CONFERENCE of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. The picture above is the Conference centre in Salt Lake Utah, were the proceedings are broadcast from. I say broadcast because the centre has 21,000 seats but also has a state of the art media centre to allow satellite links to 2896 Stake Centres all around the world (We were in Ashton UK) . This system allows all the membership of the church, which is currently just over 14million, to have the chance to listen to church leaders over the course of conference weekend.
About the Conference Centre.
The 1.4 million square foot (130,000 m2) Conference Center seats 21,200 people in its main auditorium. This includes the rostrum behind the pulpit facing the audience, which provides seating at general conference for 158 general authorities and general officers of the church and the 360-voice Mormon Tabernacle Choir. The auditorium is large enough to hold a Boeing 747 inside. All seats in the audience have an unobstructed view of the pulpit because the balcony is held up by radial trusses. This construction method allows the balcony to sink 5⁄8 inches (16 mm) under full capacity. Behind the podium is a 7,667-pipe and 130-rank Schoenstein pipe organ. Underground is a parking garage that can hold 1400 cars. A modernist, three-story chandelier hangs in a skylight in the interior of the building.
External walls of the Conference Center are clad in precisely-cut quartz monzonite (a close relative of granite). A 92-foot (28 m) glass-centered spire denotes the religious purpose of the building. A 67-foot (20 m) stepped waterfall descends from the spire. The waterfall utilizes water from a natural spring found underneath the building during construction. City Creek flows in a rough-hewn riverbed, complementing the Conference Center.
Because the building sits near the base of Salt Lake City's Capitol Hill, the roof is landscaped for attractiveness. About 3 acres (12,000 m²) of grass and hundreds of trees have been planted on the roof. Twenty-one native grasses were employed to conserve water and showcase local foliage. The landscaping is meant to echo the mountains and meadows of Utah. Source
To finish here is a hymn from the weekends events performed by the Mormon Tabernacle choir.
Please note, comments for this post have been switched off as so many people felt it was a cheap way to advertise their own conference venue ! I don'e feel the need to advertise the "unlock your iphone" service either, so please don't add that on my blog as a comment, it will get deleted !
