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This
sensitive facility houses classrooms,
counseling, and healthcare areas for
abused or neglected children from 1
month to 5 years old. Our goal was to
provide an atmosphere with minimum noise
disturbance for the 268 children who
will use these vital spaces every day.
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Challenges
The
many sensitive spaces within this facility,
including therapeutic childcare areas,
drug-affected infant care, and a crisis
nursery, required extra care in design
to ensure their appropriate acoustical
environments. Classrooms had to be as
quiet as possible, counseling and medical
areas required sound isolation as well
as speech privacy, and a rooftop playground
had to be designed to prevent noise
from transferring to sensitive spaces
below.
Solutions
We
worked closely with the team at Miller/Hull
during the design phase to ensure the
best quality facility would be built
within the budget. Classrooms were designed
to keep reverberant noise to a minimum.
Counseling and medical areas were designed
for sound isolation to achieve optimum
speech privacy requirements. We looked
carefully at acoustical details
during construction to ensure
the desired acoustical environment
was achieved.
Recommendations
were designed for the playground
deck which would prevent sound transmission
from the rooftop to the rest of the
facility. Mitigation measures
were developed to control traffic noise
to the interior while maintaining the
design’s emphasis on natural light.
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