A London-based legal and general firm required their board room and additional office spaces to offer complete privacy during confidential discussions.
People often approach us about how to deal with unwanted noise in office spaces, particularly when rooms are separated by thin walls. Whilst this issue will plague most working environments, it could be argued that legal spaces are most affected – particularly when you consider cases that require the strictest of confidentiality.
And that’s what prompted this Marble Arch-based law firm to reach out to us.
The Problem: Office Acoustics Not Providing Complete Confidentiality
The building, located in the City of Westminster, comprised of a series rooms across five floors, with each room being separated by a Gypframe stud wall.
As you will imagine, this caused numerous problems for the client – who commented on how difficult it was to maintain confidentiality, particularly when mergers were happening between two opposing companies.
The Solution: Improving Office Acoustics
In these situations, we generally recommend knocking down the walls and reconstructing them with more robust, acoustically compliant materials. However, time constraints meant that this wasn’t a viable option.
Therefore, we proposed building on top of the existing walls using a ‘layered approach’, with acoustic, fire-rated materials.
The Specifics
Building on top of the existing walls meant that we had to apply multiple layers to the substrate to achieve that all-important speech privacy.
This floating, mechanically separated solid structure comprised of:
- A skin of acoustic plasterboard
- Batons with acoustic treatment inside them
- Class 0 acoustic lining
- A floating plasterboard layer
This was then clad in a fabric treatment system which had one inch of class 0 fabric track wall.
The fabric treatment enabled us to add a splash of colour to the walls, livening up this otherwise corporate environment.
The Results
The client was so pleased with the results that we were commissioned to acoustically treat the upper floors of the building, too.
The legal and general firm are now able to carry out their practices without the worry of any issues around confidentiality.
Do you have an office space that’s plagued by speech privacy issues? Give our experts a call on 020 3984 2000.
