Project Description
Overview
Architect Nadja Zürcher designed a series of all-glass conference and huddle rooms for a top Zurich-based firm, and commissioned WSDG to do acoustic consulting, treatments and A/V integration for these spaces as well as in the surrounding office space to create rooms that were comfortable to hold meetings and video conferences in, as well as spaces where employees can work comfortably and quietly in the open office space.
Program
The office space is 27,000 square feet in total, with a large amount of open office space. The conference and huddle rooms were designed to be transparent to take advantage of natural light as well as be aesthetically pleasing. Two large conference areas were designed, as well as several smaller huddle rooms for video conferencing and more private meetings. It was also requested that WSDG treat the areas in the open office space to ensure a calm work environment outside of the conference/huddle spaces.
Design
The two large conference rooms are 430 square feet apiece and feature very efficient sound-absorptive curtains and ceiling materials in order to achieve the desired acoustic environment and ensure superior speech intelligibility and a calm, echo-free conversational environment for video conferencing purposes. The walls were deliberately designed non-parallel in order to cut down on reverberation. The huddle rooms are 160 square feet apiece and benefit from the same treatment. All of the spaces also use a heavily absorptive 4-inch-thick metal cooling ceiling to ensure that the spaces are comfortable from a temperature standpoint as well as a sonic one. Finally, all of the rooms are full integrated with A/V equipment for presenting and video conferencing.
The areas outside of the conference/huddle spaces also include acoustically treated ceilings to dissipate sound in order to ensure quiet open office areas.
Photography by Vera Gloor