Darling Harbour Sydney ICC Neighbouring Walls
The challenges
When the Sydney International Convention Centre (ICC) opened its doors again after its refurbishment, a venue of this capacity needed a multi-faceted, considered approach to solving its spatial design challenges. With numerous halls and back to back events ongoing into its bright future, the logistics and needs of the facility were designed by one of the greatest teams in the world and needed some high performing products to help make it a landmark venue of choice with state of the art materials.
Noise from trucks when it comes to bump in and bump out needed to be suitably addressed. Featuring large expanses of hard materials, highly reverberant spaces such as loading docks create an accumulative effect of the existing environment. Furthermore, failing to control reverberant noise will mean excess noise spills out into surrounding areas including apartments and homes.
The loading dock was deemed to require a Noise Reduction Coefficient of 0.8, to reduce impact of reverberant noise on the local area that is otherwise a constant feature of loading docks.
The solutions
In order to reduce noise reverberation and echo in the loading dock area, self supporting noise control panels were reinforced into a steel sub frame to create the curved wall along the boundary.
Sorberscreen® Micro panels were installed with an air-gap of 100 - 400 mm behind the wall surface to target the lower-frequency range which is most commonly emitted from trucks. A curved surface with varying air-gap meant increased performance over broader range.
The result was an aesthetically pleasing solution with minimal ongoing maintenance, using a product held in high regard by architects and consultants. The project represents continued success by Pyrotek to position themselves as industry leaders in passive acoustic solutions.
The results
Installed as an outdoor acoustic wall in a busy loading dock, Sorberscreen Micro was a commercially available walling solution suitable for the installation. The plain aluminium wall panels were ideal for the outdoor, all-weather location needing high velocity airflow. It was easily installed and ties in with the look the designers were after. The high acoustic performance has meant less reverberant noise in the loading docks.
