Optimized room acoustics

CMP fabric sets accents

For the interior design of an extensively renovated office building in Great Marlborough Street, London, the architects at Edge Architecture and Design opted for CMP fabric from GKD – GEBR. KUFFERATH AG. As elevator cladding, the mesh panels set expressive accents at the headquarters of the BlackRock UK Property Fund investment firm. To combine high-quality acoustics with an elegant visual appearance, the CMP-Alu 6010 EV3 mesh was anodized in gold.

Great Marlborough Street is one of the main streets in Soho and is famous for hosting some of the best restaurants and entertainment offerings in the West End. In the immediate vicinity of the Oxford Street and Piccadilly Circus underground stations, its varied mix of business, leisure and shopping makes it one of the most popular office sites in London for the creative industries. In order to make the building with a central position in this street stand out from the crowd and make it the place to be for exciting young companies, the architects were looking for building materials that were unusual and robust in equal measure. For this reason, they chose the golden anodized Alu 6010 EV3 mesh from GKD for cladding the elevator compartments and pillars in the entrance hall. Over a total area of around 23 square meters, 23 panels with various rectangular shapes and sizes were fitted in order to improve the room acoustics. The large panel size reduces the number of joints. Without additional insulation materials, the mesh consisting of aluminum honeycomb base plates guarantees a highly effective sound absorption coefficient of αw = 0.90. Moreover, the attractive look of the mesh panels contribute to the comfortable feel of the room. Its shimmering golden color underlines the ambient elegance and sets warm optical accents – in contrast to the cool gray color of the walls. The simple mounting of the stiff fabric was a further plus from the point of view of the developers. As such, the lightweight aluminum structure is easier to handle and fix into place.