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In order to create excitement for the MTV generation,
Foot Locker turned hundreds of its stores into cutting-edge
sight and sound arenas – complete with 24 screen
video walls, synchronized light shows and surround sound
systems. Each arena was given the theatrical look and
feel of urban back-street basketball courts and other
sports venues. Then, four times every half hour, the
store lights dim and a rotating set of show-stopping,
two-minute sight and sound videos begin, promoting an
active lifestyle. Part of the fun is that one can hear
as well as see all of the action. Unless, of course,
there’s so much reverberation within the store
that it is impossible to tell where any sound originates.
Then instead of fun and excitement, there is just indistinguishable
noise.
 That
was the challenge facing the Foot Locker store design
team in charge of creating all this razzle-dazzle: to
recreate that excitement, flawlessly and cost-effectively,
in hundreds of different Foot Locker outlets across
the United States and Canada. But every design element
that helps create excitement also creates serious acoustic
problems. “We needed to deaden the sound of
the arena show”, said Joel Torielli of WJCA
Project Planners and Designers of New Jersey. “Without
some sort of sound attenuation, the space was just too
lively.” The goal was to create a theatrical
experience without using any of the traditional solutions
that a movie theater relies on. None of the sound-absorbing
approaches used in a theater, such as curtains, carpets,
padded seating or acoustical ceiling tiles would fit
in with the new Foot Locker look.
To really understand how tough a challenge the designers
faced, we need to take a closer look at the Foot Locker
sight and sound arena. Surrounding the customer with
wood, metal and glass paneled walls, painted concrete
floors and an open ceiling that exposes duct, beams
and wiring creates an urban, edgy effect. All very cutting-edge
and all made of sound reflective surfaces, causing serious
reverberation.
Why is reverberation a problem?
 When
sounds have lots of hard surfaces to bounce off, they
hang in the air longer. If one sound can still be heard
when the next sound arrives, each becomes more difficult
to distinguish. The end result of too many sounds clashing
is an echo-chamber-like blur. A listener cannot tell
one sound from another or where the sound is coming
from. The “high tech” look of the arena’s
exposed ceiling posed yet another acoustic challenge.
Those ducts and pipes don’t just reflect sounds,
they create them. The HVAC ductwork provides a year-round
“whoosh” of sound that cuts in and out at
the most inappropriate times – say, during a dramatic
pause in the video soundtrack.
An additional challenge was that the stores are all
different sizes and shapes. The prototype arena may
well have offered the toughest acoustic environment.
Boston’s Arsenal Mall is a brick structure that,
as it’s name implies, originally housed a weapons
manufacturing plant and was used for munitions testing.
It’s brick walls, concrete floors and high open
ceilings may have been the ideal setting for an athletic
store but it is also an acoustic nightmare for a state-of-the-art
sound experience.
The Solution
The solution took shape, literally, in the form of acoustic
panels. To maintain the arena look, the team choose
the Sonex™
One acoustical foam panels and installed them high
on the walls above normal ceiling height. “The
high ceilings were part of the unfinished look that
we wanted, but the extra height added to the reverberation
problem”, said Torielli. “Covering
the perimeter with the foam controlled the noise problem.
And the pattern of the panels fit right in with the
edgy look and feel of the arena setting.”
Many of the other stores quickly followed the Arsenal
Mall store. Almost none posed quite as tough an acoustic
challenge as the prototype store, which made for an
interesting irony. Though the other stores didn’t
need as many panels to get the desired acoustical effect,
the panel’s high tech look had become a key element
of the overall image of the stores. The designer opted
to keep the full complement of panels in all of the
other store arenas. The result is a uniform store design
that draws customers to the excitement without driving
them away because of the noise.
Order
Sonex One Foam Online Now!
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