Architectural
glazing systems by leading UK manufacturer Kawneer helped to meet the
"critical" acoustics for Royal
Birmingham Conservatoire, the first music academy to be built in the UK for
30 years.
Kawneer's AA®100
zone/mullion-drained curtain walling and AA®720 windows have been used in the
triple-height foyer and as hole-in-wall windows and rooflight alongside
engineered acoustic baffles within secondary glazing reveals to further reduce
sound transmission.
They were installed
by Bennett Architectural Aluminium who carried out extensive testing to achieve
the required sound reduction figures, coming out as high as Rw 68dB for the
composite curtain wall systems designs.
For a
state-of-the-art building with one of the highest levels of sound attenuation
in the world, this was critical.
Colin Cobb, project
architect with designers Feilden Clegg Bradley, said: "The Kawneer systems
met our needs for deep-section curtain walling with modelling provided by
extra-deep face caps. The window systems integrated well with our brickwork
detailing, with clean lines around openers. Acoustic performance of window
systems was a critical factor."
He added that the
aluminium composition of the "cost effective" Kawneer systems score
well on the BREEAM materials matrix so this contributed to them achieving their
targets in this respect.
Early
engagement with main contractor Galliford Try helped the design alignment
process for the 10,000m2 building on a sloping site in Eastside that has a
three-metre drop, and ensured any challenges were ironed out early on.
Bennett managing
director Lionel Grant said: "The Royal Birmingham Conservatoire was
certainly a different kind of project for our team but we have helped to create
an instantly recognisable building and something quite unique. It is located on
a busy city centre road so it was vital we got the acoustics right to keep that
sound out."
The £57 million
building for Birmingham City University comprises a 500-seat concert hall,
146-seat recital hall, 100-seat organ studio, 100-seat black box experimental
studio, more than 70 practice teaching rooms capable of accommodating 650
students, and an 80-seat jazz club that claims to be the first permanent jazz
club performance space in any UK conservatoire.
The five storeys are
clad almost entirely in pale brick with simple rows of small, punched Kawneer
windows occasionally broken by larger feature windows. Larger ground-floor
openings trimmed with glass and aluminium pick out the entrances at either end.
Through these runs the triple-height public foyer which serves the five main
performance venues, linking street to university campus and lower ground to
second floor concert hall.
Claiming
to be the only music college specifically designed to cater for the digital
age, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire was designed to enable new ways of
teaching, learning and practising music, combining the best traditions of
analogue performance with the flexible functionality of 21st century technology.
Conservatoire
principal and cellist conductor Professor Julian Lloyd Webber said: "With
our new name and suitable magnificent new home we intend to set the global
benchmark for music and drama education and performance."
