dBx Acoustics worked Stepnell Construction and Allan Joyce Architects on the Digital Media Hub, known as the Confetti Building at Nottingham Trent University.
Construction on the £9.1m higher education facility completed in late 2018 and the building includes critical listening spaces and lecture theatres as well as open plan resource and social areas. The project achieved a BREEAM ‘Excellent’ rating and, given the nature of the building, the Client had strong aspirations for acoustic quality throughout.
dBx Acoustics were involved in the acoustic specification of building services noise levels and partitions to ensure spaces can be used simultaneously without disturbance. We completed a detailed room acoustic modelling exercise in order to develop a finishes strategy which fulfiled the Client’s requirements for teaching spaces – a tightly controlled reverberation time including at low frequencies, no perceptible room modes or acoustic ‘hot spots’, and good speech intelligibility.
A BS 4142 noise impact assessment for the roof plant was submitted to discharge planning conditions and we worked with the design team to ensure plant selections and acoustic mitigation were appropriate to meet the challenging condition of a rating level of 10 dB below background set by the Local Authority.
The project was used as a teaching exercise by the University, with the acoustic models made available for students to explore and examine.
