Client: Voice of America
COMMUNICATION
As manufacturers of architectural acoustics, nothing gets us excited more than an opportunity to put our product to the test. While many of our wall panels and baffles are implemented to dampen echoes and improve the soundscape of a given space, some are implemented for the style and aesthetics alone. Then, there are projects like the Voice of America soundstage, where the true test resided in the quantifiable power of our acoustic surfaces. The client contacted us with a product design that they liked, and an array of colors, but the real purpose of the project was acoustic control.
INTENT
This dim and dramatically lit stage needed to balance out the glass walls and solid fixtures with soft acoustic wall panels that could improve spoken sound quality. In large spaces with hard surfaces, it's common to hear echoes as sound waves travel far out and come back a second later, but in small rooms, the rules are different.
In small chambers, sound waves bounce back much faster, and with much more interference, as the sound waves return to the speaker just milliseconds after speech. The resulting effect can be described as "tinny" or "harsh" - if you've ever clapped your hands in a stone-walled basement, you might have experienced this exact effect.
Smoothing out the speech in this sound stage was an easy task for our PoshFelt® Alexandria wall panel system. With a beautiful layer of 100% natural wool felt backed by our powerful 1/2" acoustic barrier, we cranked up the sound attenuation to 11. In a room, this size, your best allies in noise control are methods known as sound diffusion and absorption. Diffusion specifically means that sound is being scattered when bounced back, which is achieved by using a textured or geometric surface, while absorption simply means the sound is penetrating into the PoshFelt® material, and its energy dissipates before it can bounce out.
CHALLENGES
While this project was ultimately successful and a powerful use case for PoshFelt®, it didn't come without its own challenges. The client had specified a tone of blue felt for the project that was in short supply, and their completion schedule did not allow for a new shipment of material.
Thankfully, due to our huge selection of colors, we were able to source and substitute a very similar blue that the client happily accepted as an alternate. With the colors finalized and the patterns predefined, these panels were assembled on our manufacturing floor and shipped for easy installation.
DESIGN PRINCIPLES: EMPHASIS
The design principle of Emphasis talks about how to bring focus to a single point, and make that focus feel important, obvious, and powerful. But the real work of emphasis comes from the components that allow the focus to flourish - which in this case is the acoustic wall panels. By using simple repeating patterns and subdued color palettes, the acoustic wall becomes a secondary feature that allows the impressive backlit stage to take priority.
CONCLUSION
We were able to design the panels around major features planned for the walls, and smaller adjustments could be made on-site to ensure a perfect fit. The finished project area looks slick and futuristic and sounds amazing.
Some projects are purely utilitarian, built for the purposes of noise reduction. Some are purely for aesthetics with no concern for attenuation. It's projects like this one that represent a perfect marriage of form and function, using PoshFelt® to the best of its ability as an interior design material and a powerful acoustic control avenue.