PolyPhon™ Acoustical Panels for Cumberland Children's Hospital
Cumberland Children's Hospital was built to be open and airy with a home-like quality to the design. However, in large multi-use rooms, the open design and high ceilings created an echo problem that made the room very difficult to use: people couldn't hear each other clearly because of the acoustical reverberation.
After installing PolyPhon™ acoustical panels the room was acoustically transformed, giving the children a place to come together.
Application Introduction
Cumberland Hospital admits children and adolescents, ages two through twenty-two. They offer programs and services designed for patients with impairment due to brain injury, chronic illness or neurological conditions as well as concurrent emotional and behavioral difficulties.
Cumberland Hospital's settings are more like a home than a standard hospital room; they incorporate an architectural design that uses bright rooms, vaulted ceilings with open spaces.
The vaulted ceilings in the multi-purpose / recreational room were leading to problems. Due to the design of the space, the facility had a terrible flutter echo problem.
What about the design caused this issue?
The ceiling in the room increased the overall volume of the room and all of the lower walls were hard parallel surfaces. Further, while the hospital was being designed, they choose not to install a standard drop tile ceiling because they desired the look of the vaulted ceiling with the skylights.
To fix this problem of increased volume, the hospital had their architect team up with Acoustical Solutions to develop a solution.
The hospital had a few requirements:
- The treatment does not block out the skylights or distract from the "openness"
- The acoustical treatment needed to be out of reach of the children within the room
- The entire project needed to be completed with a limited budget
Treatment Provided
After Acoustical Solutions met with both the architect and hospital administrators the decision was made to install the PolyPhon™ Polyester Panels directly on the ceiling within the space.
Why PolyPhon™ acoustical Panels were the right fit for this project:
- The white color of the panels did not distract from the look of the room
- The panels were easy to field cut to achieve multiple angles that were needed for the complex angles of the ceiling
- The panels were able to be easily glued flush to the ceiling and stay out of reach of the children
The PolyPhon™ Panels cost approximately half of what any standard fabric ceiling panels do and was cheaper than installing the unwanted grid / standard ceiling tiles offered by other contractors.
Results
After the installation was complete the hospital ended up with a wonderful room that they could have multiple children in at one time with very little distractions. Additionally, hospital administrators didn't have to sacrifice any of the architectural or aesthetic designs of the room.
For more information on this application, contact David Ingersoll.
