AgroLiquid Kids' Korner Exhibit

The Issue

AgroLiquid’s Kids Korner Exhibit chronicles agricultural history while unsuspectingly incorporating acoustical material into the design of the exhibit. Acoustical Solutions worked closely with their creative team to provide custom sound absorbing materials to achieve their goals.

The Challenge

The Kids’ Korner in the IQHub exhibit space is free and open to the public. This is part of a 9,500 square foot facility at AgroLiquid’s headquarters in St. Johns, Michigan. They have games, toys and a reading nook. This exhibit space is designed to encourage children to learn about American agriculture. Part of the road to gaining this understanding is having a room with good speech intelligibility. Being able to combine visual and audio cues helps to create stronger connections. This facilitates learning on more than just one level.

The hard surfaces in the large, open space contribute to the echo and reverb within the space. When groups of guests gather in the space, speech levels increase. This is due to the ambient noise reverberating off of hard surfaces. Communication then becomes difficult and the sound of the exhibit audio is hard to understand.

The Solution

The creative team sought to establish a stable acoustic environment that would not detract from the exhibits. We rose to the challenge by offering acoustical materials that met their needs. AgroLiquid chose EcoSorpt^® Cotton based on their economical price point, with an added benefit of adhering to their LEED Gold certification. Installing EcoSorpt^® Cotton Acoustic Panels and EcoSorpt^® Cotton Sound Baffles throughout the room reduces the overall reverberation, thus improving speech intelligibility.

The design team worked to find a way to incorporate material directly into the exhibit displays. Art acoustic graphic panels were customized to blend the acoustical material right into the exhibit itself. Typically, these panels are mounted to a wall. In this case, the art panels were backed with standard fabric wrapped panels to create a custom hanging baffle. The baffles help to absorb sound in the exhibit area as well as blend with their decor by using a Periodic Table Print and some Cloud scenes that incorporated the Kids’ Korner logo.

AgroLiquid Exhibit Room showcases double sided acoustical art panels mounted as baffles to reduce the echo in this display area.

The Result

By installing the EcoSorpt^® and custom art baffles, they were able to reduce the reverb time significantly. This led to better speech intelligibility and an overall better experience for guests.

From the Client: “…I am extremely happy with the Art Panels from a visual perspective for sure!”