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Hackney New School

BREEAM Rating: Very Good
Value: £11.5m
Design & Build Contract

Hackney New School is a secondary school with a focus on musical education. There are a relatively large number of music performance rooms, many of which are adjacent to each other. This presents a challenge in terms of achieving the required sound insulation performance between music rooms because each room has the potential to generate high sound levels whilst also being very sensitive to sound transmission from adjacent spaces.

Masonry wall and floor constructions are usually the most effective means of controlling sound transmission between these rooms but, where this is not feasible, twin or staggered stud drylined partitions can be used to good effect. For this project it was very important to assess the flanking construction elements which, if not design appropriately, can have a detrimental effect on the overall sound insulation performance of the separating wall or floor.

Junction details, such as those between the separating wall and the corridor wall, were assessed and designed to minimise sound transmission as much as possible. The required airborne and impact sound insulation performance values were confirmed by the pre-completion acoustic tests, as were the reverberation time and internal noise level requirements.

Project Team

Contractor: Willmott Dixon
Architecture: Henley Halebrown
Project Management: Mace
Acoustic Consultancy: Ismail Alli-Balogun (for Applied Acoustic Design)