Colorful acoustic ceilings create an optimal museum acoustic experience
Blending acoustics and color to capture a better experience
Every inch of the Washington, D.C.-based International Spy Museum was designed and constructed to capture the essence of espionage, secrecy and intrigue. Rockfon's sound-absorbing stone wool products help contribute to the intensive, quiet and focused feeling that permeates the space.
Designed by London-based lead architect Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners in collaboration with Hickok Cole of Washington, D.C., the 140,000-square-foot building has quickly become recognizable for its distinct and dynamic identity. The building’s exterior features dramatic, sloped columns; a backlighted, folded, metal panel skin; and a pleated glass veil – all emphasizing the museum’s theme of “hiding in plain sight.”
The theme continues into the seven-story building’s eight-floor interior. Behind the scenes, sustainable goals also guided the building’s design and construction in achieving LEED® Silver certification. The purpose-built nonprofit museum facility more than doubled the space of the previous location’s education and programming space. Above the two-story lobby and retail area, and the three floors of exhibition and theatre space, are two floors of set-back event space and a rooftop terrace with nearly 360-degree views of city. Enhancing the visitors’ experience within the museum, sound-absorbing Rockfon Alaska®, Rockfon® Koral™ and Rockfon® Color-All™ acoustic stone wool ceiling panels were installed throughout the building. All of these products offer a Noise Reduction Coefficient (NRC) of 0.85 or higher. With an NRC of up to 0.90, Rockfon Color-All 2-by-8-foot Anthracite panels were selected for the lobby and 1-by-5-foot Concrete panels for the gallery and event space. The Color-All colors were selected first, and the designers designed the entire space around the colors, so everything would blend seamlessly together.
All of these stone wool ceiling products from Rockfon also offer high fire performance and have earned GREENGUARD® Gold Certification for low-VOC emission. Products with this GREENGUARD® certification contribute to indoor air quality and support LEED criteria. Stone wool’s natural properties for resisting moisture and humidity also are key attributes in museum installations with sensitive climate-controlled protection.
The new Spy Museum’s permanent collection features more than 7,000 unique artifacts offering visitors the opportunity to come face-to-face with never-before-seen intelligence tools and gadgets. The expanded exhibits also reveal the often overlooked accounts of women and African-American officers and their crucial and largely unknown contributions, from the Revolutionary War to the present.
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