Grand Horizons Community Center Acoustics

The Grand Horizons Community Center is purposed for a variety of activities. It can be used for large or small group meetings, conferences, social events, musical performances, and much more. Those who use the room will undoubtedly be communicating in a variety of ways. They could just be conversing person to person or utilizing an amplified system to speak to a large group. In either case, speech intelligibility will be critical. To be sure everyone is communicating effectively, the room must have the appropriate acoustic environment. This means that the rooms RT60 time should be reduced to an appropriate level. In this application, fabric wrapped acoustical wall panels were already in use around the room. This left a large amount of open reflective area across the ceiling. Since tables and chairs are often set up around the room, there was no absorptive material in the immediate space. This allowed sound to bounce back and forth between the tile floor and ceiling. Holding conversations at the tables was quite challenging. We were contacted by a representative of the community center’s HOA about various options for the ceiling. “I am with a homeowners’ association and we are trying to reduce the noise in our community center. Our ceiling dimensions are approximately 40′ x 40′. Your assistance is greatly appreciated. Thank you.”

We discussed various options for materials that could be used for ceiling applications. The final choice was the Whisperwave® Ceiling Clouds. These provide excellent absorption and an interesting design element. They also allow the installer to work around lighting, sprinklers, HVAC, and other obstacles in the ceiling. The material was easily installed by volunteers of the HOA.