You can take your ACT and shove it up your ceiling. Roll up your carpets, folks, the old school acoustics are sounding off.
Sound control just got really appealing. Gone are the days of a perforated cube or rectangle suspended in a metal grid hanging 3 feet over your head with water stains from who-knows-what and who-knows-when. The new generation of sound control is not just colorful, it's three dimensional and incredibly functional. It is sustainable.
Products like EchoCloud, EchoStar, EchoBlade, EchoScreen, and Echopanel, just by their naming convention should shed some light on the direction the industry is going. Available in a myriad of colors, patterns, and sizes, these products are adorning ceilings in walls and adding a design element to acoustics. Finally!
Imagine cloud shaped acoustic panels suspended from the ceiling? Whites and blues to simulate the sky. Elaborate tiles in a wave, pentagon, triangle, and rectangle shapes pieced together to create a stunning accent wall that looks great and mitigates noise within a room.
What is that random fabric wrapped rectangle stuck on the wall at your favorite restaurant? Um, er, well that is after the fact, low-effort, ugly sound control. Did you hear me? Those days are GONE. With the innovative new panels and their STC (sound transmission class – read: the ability to stop sound from bouncing around etc) performance, form and function in sound control can work in concert (corny sound jokes abound!).
Acoustics in design was an afterthought for the most part until recent studies found that the effects of noisy environments can really impact employees, patients, students, YOU. Even socially, a restaurant where you are yelling across the table is not exactly a bonding date night.
Growing awareness, coupled with the shift toward more open office environments and more industrial commercial setting, means acoustics is at the forefront of design and it ain’t pretty.
Till now.
Here are some examples of how acoustic panels can spice up a space.
Kirei Mura EchoPanel Wave Tiles.
Getting excited? We are. The evolution of acoustic design is not relegated to the sciences. Designers finally have some toys of their own… and they come in endless shapes and sizes.
So – the acoustic design in your next project is a blank canvas – but it doesn’t have to look like one. Bring on the colors, the dimensions, the patterns. This not only sounds good, it looks good too!
