DE-CIX

DE-CIX operates one of the world’s largest Internet exchanges in Frankfurt am Main. A quiet environment is essential for concentrated work here. However, a large office environment with lots of people and technology often creates a problematic acoustic atmosphere. With the help of HOFA modules, all offices, meeting rooms and corridors have been acoustically optimized. There is now optimum speech intelligibility for stress-free meetings, as well as comprehensive sound absorption and insulation for a working environment without acoustic disturbance factors.

The challenge

Poorly insulated rooms and reflective surfaces on walls and ceilings mean that phone calls, conversations and noisy appliances such as coffee machines and printers become acoustic sources of interference. All these problems prompted DE-CIX to contact us for a new acoustic concept.

The request described typical issues such as high volume levels and reverberant rooms – and therefore very wearisome communication. In addition, due to gaps in the glass elements and partition walls, there was a strong propagation of all noises through the corridors and the many individual rooms.

Blanke Decken und Betonwände, sowie große Glasflächen sorgen für eine problematische Akustik. — Bare concrete walls and ceilings as well as large glass surfaces make for poor acoustics.

The solution

The specified objectives were the isolation of noise sources, reduced reverberation and improved intelligibility.

The first step was to create an acoustic concept for the entire floor and work it out in detail as a 3D model. Next, the reverberation time RT60 was calculated for each room in order to determine which and how much optimisation was required.

We achieved the reduction of the reverberation time by using effectively positioned wall and ceiling sails in various sizes and separated the individual rooms with ISO acoustic curtains.

Ultimately, all offices, meeting rooms and corridors were optimised with the HOFA acoustic modules and the acoustic makeover was a complete success. Perfect intelligibility makes for stress-free meetings, while sound absorption and insulation across the entire area ensures a working environment without acoustic disturbances.
Even the coffee machine, printer and conversations between colleagues in other offices are no longer distracting.