What Is Acoustic Insulation?

Posted on 16/03/2024 by Pooja Khanna Tyagi

Good acoustics is important in any design, and it is important to plan for this right from the start of a project, from designing to building it. Note that if a building is designed well with good acoustic design, it can make people feel better mentally and physically. This is because, loud noises can make people stressed, and anxious, and raise their blood pressure, leading to health problems.

Designer: Interesting Times Gang and OBOS

What is the importance of sound insulation?

According to studies, noise pollution presents a significant risk to people’s health, especially for those living and working in urban settings. While controlling noise at its origin isn’t always feasible, effective soundproofing of buildings can provide a valuable solution. Installing soundproofing materials in the roof or building exterior can greatly reduce external noise from sources like traffic or airplanes. Within buildings, insulation can improve privacy and mitigate disturbance from neighboring properties, such as music or footsteps from upstairs apartments. This is particularly advantageous when applied to partitions between different spaces in residential or office buildings. Utilizing sound insulation boards can help minimize noise intrusion in both living and working environments.

What are the various forms of sound propagation?

Image courtesy of: photovs

Building acoustics studies how sound travels through walls, ceilings, and roofs, with insulation needs determined by factors such as area size and the types of sound transmission, whether direct or through walls.

• Direct sound transmission involves sound passing directly through a wall, ceiling, or floor.
• Flanking noise is the noise that reaches a room through an indirect path. For example, it could be noise from a neighboring apartment reaching your bedroom through a route other than through the shared wall, or noise from a hallway reaching your office through a route other than through the door.
• Other forms of sound transmission include leakage through inadequately sealed doors and windows, brickwork, and uninsulated pipelines.

Image courtesy of: bilanol

What are the best materials for acoustic insulation?

Discover the top materials that are suitable for acoustic insulation.

Acoustic Panels and Treatments

Soundproofing involves the use of acoustic panels and treatments to absorb and minimize sound waves, reducing resonance and unwanted noise. It’s crucial in places like recording studios, theaters, and restaurants. Different styles, like foam panels and diffusers, cater to various acoustic needs.

Designers: Alberto Sánchez & Mut Design Studio

Image courtesy of: duallogic

Alberto Sánchez and Mut Design Studio innovate with Beetle Acoustic Panels, drawing from the insect world for design inspiration. These panels, shaped like beetle exoskeletons, offer a range of colors and sizes, transforming utilitarian sound absorption into artistic accents. Despite lacking spines like beetles, a central spine connects the panels, emphasizing symmetry. This experiment showcases creativity’s boundless nature and encourages finding inspiration in unexpected places, sparking joy with quirky shapes and vibrant colors.

Designer: KEM Studio for Loftwall

Working from home has introduced a whole new routine, but one annoyance is listening to my husband’s constant office meetings. The noise is distracting, even with closed doors. Tempo offers a solution—a modular wall and ceiling baffle system that doubles as art. With 12 customizable modules, it absorbs sound and adds visual flair to any room. Easy to install with a CNC dowel system and cork plugs, Tempo’s various colors and patterns allow for endless combinations. It’s like acoustic eye candy, perfect for home offices, conference rooms, or bedrooms, transforming spaces both visually and acoustically with the ease of IKEA’s modularity and the trendy Japandi aesthetic.

Echo panels are gaining significance in room acoustics, now integral to interior design. Kirei introduces its sustainable Kirei Air Baffle, drawing inspiration from Nike Air Max, to enhance sound in high-ceiling spaces. Utilizing recycled PET EchoPanel material filled with Nike Grind fluff, these baffles come in various models and sizes, improving acoustic performance and adding aesthetic value. With customization options in 33 colors and easy installation, they contribute to a softer room ambiance and sound, elevating the functionality and aesthetics of any space with Kirei’s architectural design elements.

Designer: Michael DiTullo

The Kirei Air Baffle, an overhead acoustic panel, enhances sound quality in high-ceilinged spaces. What sets it apart, beyond its superior sound performance, is its sustainability. Even in the realm of acoustics, sustainability is achievable with the use of environmentally conscious materials.

Acoustic Foam

Acoustic foam panels, renowned for their porous and lightweight design, excel at absorbing sound waves. They’re particularly favored for reducing reverberation and controlling noise levels in settings like media rooms, music studios, and home offices.

Double Glass

Double-glazed windows with acoustic laminated glass are highly effective in reducing external noise, including car and street noise, making them perfect for urban environments. They offer a great alternative for soundproofing both homes and offices. Note that Double-glazed windows are made out of two glass panes separated by Argon gas. This specific gas is a poor thermal conductor. As a result, the sound or heat does not pass through the second glass pane and into the other side of the window.

Mineral Wool

Image courtesy of: bilanol

Made from mineral wool extracted from minerals, this material provides powerful sound insulation. It’s not only a thermal insulator but also commonly utilized in wall cavities, ceilings, and other spaces to minimize noise transfer between rooms.

Glass Wool

Glass wool, also called fiberglass insulation, serves as a popular choice for thermal insulation. Its effective sound absorption properties also make it cost-effective for soundproofing purposes. It’s commonly applied to walls and ceilings to provide dual insulation services.

Textile

Textile-based sound-absorbing materials like heavy curtains, carpets, and fabric-wrapped panels are commonly found in quiet-seeking homes and offices. Beyond their noise-reducing function, they also contribute to the visual appeal of their surroundings.

Designer: Claudio Bellini

In modern office settings, privacy remains vital despite open layouts. Milan-based Claudio Bellini design studio addresses this with FP7, acoustic panels serving as both dividers and noise absorbers. Specifically for open offices, FP7 visually delineates private areas while absorbing sound. Available in various colors, these panels create a cohesive look. Made from embedded cushioning and soft fabric, they offer flexibility in arrangement to suit different privacy needs. A finalist at the 2021 iF Design Awards, FP7 seamlessly integrates with contemporary office culture, providing private spaces for discussions and collaboration.

Sustainable Design

Designer: Jonas Edvard

In sustainable design, Jonas Edvard is known for his innovative use of organic materials to create functional and attractive objects. His latest creation, the Myx Sail / Floor panel, showcased at the 2023 Mindcraft Project, is made from mushroom mycelium, hemp, and willow. This 1m x 1m panel not only shows the strength of composite biomaterials but also reflects Edvard’s commitment to responsible design.

Designer:Baux

Consider acoustic panels for your office or co-working space when soundproofing isn’t an option. They reduce noise and can serve as room dividers. Baux, a Swedish brand, prioritizes sustainability by using recycled PET plastic and virgin plastic for binding. The panels, with a felt-like texture, undergo a process of chipping, melting, and binding for effective sound absorption. Available in various sizes and colors, they offer both functionality and minimalistic design.

Designer: Mogu

Mycelium, nature’s hidden strength, finds diverse applications from cooking to construction. Italy-based Mogu’s Foresta System ingeniously combines mycelium with upcycled textiles to create modular acoustic panels, perfect for home building and furnishing. These panels easily attach to a timber frame, featuring integrated magnets for effortless assembly and disassembly. Foresta’s innovative use of mycelium earned it the 2022 German Design Award for its eco-conscious and circular design, highlighting Mogu’s dedication to sustainability.

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Introducing An Acoustical Material That Can Be Used Even For Outdoor Events

Posted on 19/02/2024 by Tanvi Joshi

In the dynamic world of sustainable design, Jonas Edvard stands out with his innovative approach to integrating organic materials into functional and aesthetically pleasing objects. His latest creation, the Myx Sail / Floor, unveiled at the Mindcraft Project 2023, is a sound-absorbing panel that showcases the remarkable properties of mushroom mycelium, hemp, and willow. This 1m x 1m panel not only exemplifies the structural possibilities of composite biomaterials but also represents Edvard’s commitment to responsible design practices.

Designer: Jonas Edvard

The Myx Sail / Floor project is a testament to Jonas Edvard’s dedication to exploring the symbiotic relationship between design choices and their impact on nature. Collaborating with a living material – mushroom mycelium – throughout the design and production process, Edvard creates a flexible room divider within a pre-designed mold. As the mycelium gradually grows and bonds with a plant fiber mixture, the panel takes shape, marrying flexibility with rigidity.

The designer draws inspiration from the natural role of mushrooms as recycling agents, breaking down plant matter into soil. His design philosophy revolves around a deep respect for nature, evident in his exploration of the intricate relationship between raw materials and human life. The Myx Sail / Floor prototype serves as a modular design that aims to emphasize how organic materials like mycelium can seamlessly integrate into our living and working spaces.

Jonas Edvard’s broader research study, conducted in collaboration with Arup Engineers in Germany, delves into the sound-absorbing qualities of mycelium. The panels are meticulously designed to absorb frequencies between 200 and 2500 Hz – the standard range of human conversation and interaction (same as glass wool). Edvard envisions the potential for natural, organic materials to become integral components of our buildings and interior architecture, contributing to a more sustainable life cycle.

The design philosophy revolves around responsible design choices and their impact on nature. His open-minded approach to design leads to experiments that yield new materials and objects from local or organic sources, often embracing a circular and sustainable ethos. In his testing phase, Edvard explores various material combinations to understand the design, appearance, and functionality of mycelium-based sound-absorbing material.

The Myx Sail / Floor sound-absorbing panel invites people to touch and feel the natural qualities of mushroom mycelium, hemp, and willow. Edvard aims to create an immersive experience, allowing individuals to sense the porous, lightweight, and stiff characteristics of the materials. By reshaping these materials into functional forms, he hopes to spark conversations about the value and aesthetics of natural origins, encouraging a new understanding of how these materials can be incorporated into our homes and living areas. Now the acoustic installation won’t just be on the walls and ceilings conventionally, but the floors too!

The Myx Sail / Floor is more than just a sound-absorbing panel – it is a tangible embodiment of sustainable design principles and a testament to the possibilities that arise when designers collaborate with nature. As Edvard continues to push the boundaries of material innovation, his work inspires the integration of organic, natural materials into our built environment, fostering a harmonious relationship between design and the natural world.

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Beetle-inspired acoustic panels explore unique bug-like shapes and vibrant color palettes

Posted on 29/09/2022 by Sarang Sheth

It isn’t often that people look to bugs for inspiration, especially for home decor and color themes, but Alberto Sánchez and Mut Design Studio are paving the way for a new kind of biomimicry in design. The Beetle Acoustic Panels, rather simply named, explore unique acoustic panel shapes and colors that take inspiration from the vast world of arthropods. Teeming with variety, the world of beetles offers a lot of flexibility for how these panels can be shaped, and the patterns and color palette options are practically endless. Moreover, this effectively takes something utilitarian as a sound-absorbing panel and turns it into an artistic wall-mounted accent piece that’s sure to add a pop of vibrancy to any space!

Designers: Alberto Sánchez & Mut Design Studio

The Beetle Acoustic Panels come in a variety of shapes and sizes, paying a fine tribute to beetles that can range from tiny and vibrant to large and dull. The beetle’s rounded exoskeleton was the inspiration for the acoustic panel’s pill-shaped design, with the various sub-surfaces inspired by the different parts of a beetle’s body. A central spine connects all the panels together, although beetles don’t really have spines. In a way, however, it does reinforce the bilateral symmetry of the panels and their invertebrate inspiration.

The real takeaway from this design experiment is that inspiration can come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and can be found pretty much anywhere if you look with the right mindset. The Beetle Acoustic Panels just spark joy with their quirky shapes and eye-catching color palettes. They can be used in singular formats or you could alternatively turn your entire wall into a sound-absorbing ode to beetles. I’d personally have just four of them and name them John, Paul, George, and Ringo…

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These 100% bio-based acoustic panels using PET plastic can divide and semi sound proof your space

Posted on 21/06/2022 by Ida Torres

If you cannot create sound-proof rooms at your office or co-working space, the next best thing would be acoustic panels. Of course, they will not be able to totally isolate each space but they can help reduce noise and also serve as a divider for the various rooms or desks. To have something that is also sustainable and can be recycled when it reaches the end of its life cycle is of course a great bonus. This new product from the Swedish brand Baux brings all these elements together.

Designer: Baux

One of the goals of this Swedish brand is to create sustainable acoustic sound absorbers and to use as few materials as they can. With this new line of acoustic panels, they were able to limit materials to two: recycled PET plastic and virgin plastic. As much as they wanted to use just the former, they needed the latter to bind the materials together. The good news is they didn’t need other binding materials like glue which would have made it more difficult to eventually recycle these items.

How they were able to create these felt-like acoustic panels required several processes. First, they had to chip down the PET plastic into small flakes and then melt them down until they become fibers, turning into soft textile. They needed virgin plastic to be able to bind these together and even though this is not the best, sustainable material, it is still better than using glues or more complex manufacturing. The panels are made from two-thirds recycled PET plastic and one-third virgin plastic.

In terms of design, the acoustic panels come in nine different sizes and are available in both floor stand and desk-mounted models. They have a felt-like texture and are pretty minimal in its look. That’s ideal since the purpose really is to serve as dividers for your spaces so decorations and other distractions are not needed. They come in different colors like shades of grey, coral red, khaki, and jade green and so there’s still a splash of something there. These standalone panels are able to absorb and deflect sound and reduce the noise that might disturb the person in the next “room” or “cubicle”.

Since this is a single-material product, when the acoustic panels reach the end of its life or purpose, they can easily be recycled. Baux has been going for “monomateriality” and this product is one proof that it can be done. And all the PET plastic that we have lying around can be repurposed into something useful.

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Kirei Acoustic Ceiling Baffle system offers a softer look and sound to any room

Posted on 11/04/2022 by Rei Padla

Kirei Air Baffle Specs

Not many people may not be aware of echo panels, but these stuff are becoming more important than ever. The acoustics of a room are now considered an essential part of the interior or structure of an establishment.

The line of acoustic products is expanding and is going beyond individual speakers and speaker sets. Companies like Kirei have been working on acoustic products. The latest from the brand is something inspired by the Nike Air Max–the Kirei Air Baffle.

Designer: Michael DiTullo

Kirei Air Baffle

The Kirei Air Baffle is an over-the-head acoustic panel that can improve the sound in spaces with high ceilings. What makes this more special, apart from the idea it offers better sound, is that it is sustainable. Even in acoustics, sustainability is also possible. It’s only a matter of finding suitable materials that are mindful of the environment.

Kire’s Air Baffle Product Collection includes different models: No Window, Short Window, and Long Window. Each type features EchoPanel recycled PET ( at least 60%). Every unit is filled with Nike Grind fluff enclosed with either a long or short window or nothing at all. The EchoPanel, which serves as the outer hull, is 12mm thick.

Kirei Air Baffle Echo Panel

Kirei Air Baffle Nike

Expect the Kirei Air Baffle to improve acoustic performance in a room. The system is more than just decorative, as every panel has acoustic purposes. The Baffle comes in different sizes: 40-inches, 48”, 72”, and 96”. Each one varies in dimensions and weight and is made to order.

If you’re planning on using the Kirei Air Baffle, you will have to order ahead. Lead time is from four to eight weeks depending on the number of Baffles you purchase. You can choose from the 33 colors of Kirei EchoPanels to match the room you are working on. They are ready to install using mounting hardware and suspension cables. There is no need to assemble because the products are shipped ready for direct installation out of the box.

Kirei Air Baffle Nike

Kirei offers these architectural design elements to improve any room’s functionality, look, and acoustics. The Kirei Acoustic Ceiling Baffle system can make any space appear softer and have a softer sound. The curved baffles with Nike Grind fluff offer dependable acoustic performance. Even if some people don’t notice the acoustic, they may remember the ceiling design.

Kirei Air Baffle Features

Kirei isn’t the only brand we know working on acoustic panels. In recent months, we have learned about the Foresta System modular acoustic panel and the Ikea-inspired Tempo modular wall and ceiling baffle system. Then, of course, there are also the FP7 acoustic panels meant to absorb soundwaves without blocking out background noise.

Kirei Air Baffle How to Install

Kirei Air Baffle Demo

Kirei Air Baffle Colors

Kirei Air Baffle Sample

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Sustainable modular acoustic panels are made from a unique blend of up-cycled textile and mycelium

Posted on 02/02/2022 by Shawn McNulty-Kowal

Foresta System is a modular acoustic panel design made from a unique blend of fungal mycelium and upcycled textile material.

Mycelium is like nature’s hidden superpower. Mushrooms can be used for anything from cooking, health and wellness, and even construction. Packed with industrial-level strength, mycelium is a natural fungi material that has recently been used as building materials for various construction projects.

Designer: Mogu

From home building to furnishing needs, mycelium provides an organic, yet durable construction material. Now used to create interior acoustic panels, the Foresta System designed by Italy-based Mogu takes a unique blend of mycelium and upcycled textile materials to create modular acoustic panels.

Constructed from a mix of mycelium panels, wood branches, and nodes, the timber frame that supports the different parts of Foresta can be mechanically fixed to the wall or vertical surface. Each node also carries integrated magnets that allow the acoustic panels to be mounted on the timber frame, allowing for easy removal and assembly.

The first of its kind to integrate mycelium into its build, Foresta has been granted the winning prize of the 2022 German Design Awards for its eco-conscious and innovative design. 100% circular by design, none of Mogu Acoustic products are made with synthetic material, nodding towards the company’s “extremely virtuous manufacturing cycle,” as the German Design jury suggests.

Made entirely from fungal mycelium and upcycled textile materials, Foresta is a collection of modular acoustic panels used to minimize the acoustic levels of noisy spaces like restaurants, offices, and retail businesses. Using the latest technologies in wood processing such as product parametric modeling, robotized production lines, and advanced manufacturing, Mogu was able to combine the refined aesthetics of wooden design with the cutting-edge nature of fungal mycelium to produce a truly innovative product.

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These fabric acoustic panels absorbs sound and double as a room divider for a great open office space!

Posted on 31/03/2021 by Shawn McNulty-Kowal

Open office spaces might have replaced cubicles, but we still need some privacy. Products like wooden partitions and pipe-and-drape screens can do a good job of visually separating space, but sound travels and the issue of privacy remains. To provide a means for sound isolation and visual privacy without compromising the inclusive aspect of open office spaces, Milan-based Claudio Bellini design studio created FP7, a collection of acoustic panels that double as room dividers and noise absorbers.

Designed specifically for the open office space, FP7 functions as an acoustic panel to absorb soundwaves without entirely blocking out background noise and as a room divider to visually delineate areas of privacy throughout any given office. The panels that make up the collection come in various colors, all giving off either a bright and exuberant or a subtler, toned-down display which can be chosen depending on the office’s design scheme. Designed to form a set, each panel comes in varying sizes, properly resembling a sort of visual soundwave when positioned together. The panels, which are made from embedded cushioning that’s overlaid with soft fabric, can be organized however the office sees fit.

Privacy is non-negotiable in office settings, and in public spaces, a space for more intimate conversations should always be accessible. Ideal for busy locations like the lobby, group workstations, or even the library, the FP7 acoustic panels can be grouped wherever extra privacy is needed. Qualifying for 2021’s Final Jury at iF Design Awards, FP7 embraces today’s office culture’s openness while creating a way for workers to access private areas for conversing or brainstorming.