The soaring atrium in the Australian Nurses and Midwifery Federation is a beautiful testament to open design. Unfortunately, it also created the perfect funnel to amplify intrusive noise throughout three storeys. Further, the low background sound levels in the space meant any noise would become annoying.

The facility

The Australian Nurses and Midwifery Federation built a state-of-the-art facility eight storey building for their members. Within the building were meeting rooms, training facilities, lecture theatres, open plan offices and a board room.

The soaring atrium created a light filled, modern space and doubled as an internal staircase between the top three floors. The head office operations took place within the open office spaces. Meeting and quiet rooms were situated within the space, along with a modern social space for members to congregate.

The entire structure was thoughtfully designed to maximise aesthetics and encourage collaboration within the office environment.

The problem

Due to the high volume of glass and other hard surfaces, and low ambient background noise levels, sound transference was creating distracting noise and reducing speech privacy. Within the open plan area, including the call centre, workers were growing frustrated with each other’s noise. Meeting and quiet rooms were not as private as they could be.

However, the biggest problem was within the glass-enclosed staircase which acted as an echo chamber. At the base of this atrium, any conversation or activity taking place would be amplified by the reverberant hard surfaces. This disrupted the productivity and comfort of workers in the open plan office space.

Similarly, any social activities taking place in the purpose-built space adjacent to the atrium would be amplified. The collision of acoustics and aesthetics had a reached an impasse.

The solution

Through a consultative process, which included an occupational therapist, Soundmask worked with the client to design the perfect system for the space. Our multi-zone system accounted for the variety of ceiling surfaces and the atrium to create a comfortable acoustic environment. Sounds travelling throughout the space, and in particular via the atrium, was minimised. This meant that worker satisfaction and productivity improved.