The London Gunnnersbury Park Museum is a perfect example of how high-performance acoustic solutions can solve the problem of noise in public and leisure places. As design trends continue towards minimal furniture and hard surfaces, it becomes increasingly important to reconcile aesthetics with personal comfort.
As part of its Heritage Lottery Funded redevelopment, London’s once-neglected Gunnersbury Park Museum has been transformed. It now boasts new gallery and learning spaces as well as a brand-new exhibit telling the stories of local people. A new addition to the Regency Mansion is the pavilion, originally designed to house both the catering facilities and horse-drawn carriages that are a large part of the Park’s heritage. When considering its redesign, the architects wanted to create a space that would provide a hub for the Park. It needed to be a space that emotionally connected with visitors to the Museum and regular users of the Park.
With this in mind, the designers decided to specify Troldtekt panels. With their natural look and feel and acoustic properties, they were the ideal solution for the ceiling. It allowed them to use harder surface materials elsewhere to suit the architecture of the pavilion.
Path Design says, “We needed to ensure that we addressed what could be a relatively hard interior because of the heavy floors we needed for high traffic catering and the predominantly glazed elevations. As such, we looked to soften acoustically the space to reduce the background noise generated by the open kitchen and coffee machines, along with the general noise created by visitors.”