Located on the ground floor of a high-rise in Zurich’s Europaallee Sector, new nightclub/bar/restaurant Club Neo sought to pre-empt any noise problems with its neighbours by installing extensive sound control and isolation.
A busy restaurant during the day and evening, Club Neo transforms after hours to a double height dance club with an interior balcony. Oversized, motorised windows can be fully raised in the summertime, enabling visitors to move freely in and out of the restaurant, but are closed in club mode to contain the sound. As a further enhancement to the ambiance, an artificial lake will soon spring up in front of the building. On weekend nights, when dinner guests have departed, the windows are lowered, the lighting transforms to heighten the party atmosphere, and a sound absorbing curtain is drawn to protect privacy (and safeguard local resident sleep patterns). The sound level slips past 11 as the restaurant morphs into a 21st century, DJ-driven dance club and the young and the beautiful boogie the night away.
The Walters-Storyk Design Group (WSDG) performed structural acoustics consulting, environmental sound impact analysis and design studies for the exciting new venue. The sound isolation challenge was to allow for a club-type frequency range and sound pressure level, while maintaining strict quietness levels for the four office floors and seven apartment floors directly above. Effective acoustic isolation was achieved by fully decoupling the floor, wall and ceiling. Additionally, the interior balcony and loudspeaker columns were set on decoupled footplates to minimise structure-borne sound transmission. Further complementing the club’s ambiance, a series of overlapping elliptical acoustic ceiling treatments were strategically positioned over the ‘floating lounge’ to absorb potential reflective sounds.
Dirk Noy, GM, WSDG Europe reports that the system performs as designed, protecting neighbouring apartments from any intrusive sound. Considering the residences (crowned by a double height penthouse), are among Zurich’s priciest and most coveted, this was a critical prerequisite.
Building elite homes directly over venues devoted to hyper-social commotion may seem incongruous. However, it underscores the need for acoustic isolation in today’s commingled world of business, pleasure and privacy.
More: www.wsdg.com
