Tag Archives: insulation

What Is Acoustic Insulation?

Posted on by

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.

The post What Is Acoustic Insulation? first appeared on Yanko Design.

This passive house features a living green roof that merges the home with its forested surroundings!

Posted on by

Hill House is a passive house designed and constructed by Snegiri Architects with a living green roof that blends the home seamlessly with its natural woodland surroundings.

Passive houses and green homes are rising in popularity, cropping up across the globe, and slowly, but steadily establishing a new standard for residence architecture. Photovoltaic panels, living roofs, and rainwater collection systems are some of the most common sustainable and energy-efficient elements that grace the outside and inside of such homes. Snegiri Architects, a firm based in Saint Petersburg, Russia, finished work on a passive residence called Hill House, complete with a living green roof that merges the home with the nearby forest.

Building new homes, especially passive houses, in dense woodlands without felling trees is a near-impossible task unless you incorporate them into the home’s layout. Managing to preserve the forested lot’s preexisting trees, Snegiri Architects built Hill House to be entirely integrated into the surrounding environment. Plotted with diverse plant life and shrubbery, Hill House’s living green roof sprawls with a grass carpet filled with stonecrop and dwarf plants including chamomile and sedum.

The gradual incline of Hill House’s green roof conceals the home’s structural presence, bringing the home inch by inch into the bordering woods. The rest of Hill House’s exterior strikes a balance between black-stained wood-paneled facades and natural, unstained wood-paneled eaves. With this contrast, the home blends naturally into its surroundings, but its interiors remain bright with light window accents.

From top to bottom, the Hill House undoubtedly reaches the energy efficiency standard set by passive house building techniques. The terrace and most of the rooms are oriented towards the home’s sunny side to collect the maximum amount of sunlight during the day and energy-saving windows prevent the heated or cooled air from leaving the home. The home is also ventilated with air recovery, and Swedish slab, monolith, mineral wool, and linseed oil-soaked larch all provide the home with insulation from its foundation to its roof.

Designer: Snegiri Architects

This net-zero off-grid home generates solar power to keep it running for the ultimate sustainable lifestyle!

Posted on by

The Off Grid House from Anderson Architecture pushes sustainability to its outer limits in the Blue Mountains of Australia, equipping the home with added protection against insect attacks and extreme weather conditions like bushfires and rainstorms.

Designing and constructing off-grid houses powered by renewable forms of energy takes a lot of craftsmanship and know-how. Every single detail matters–from the insects that live outside the front door to the location’s natural climate and weather conditions. For Anderson Architecture, constructing their latest Off Grid House in the native bushlands of the Blue Mountains in Australia came with its own slew of challenges, but as they describe, “a site’s chief problem should always be the source of its key innovation.”

Operable without a backup generator, the Off Grid House is a bi-level home that’s essentially split into two sections. The two sections of the Off Grif House appear as two steeply pitched skillion-roofed boxes facing opposite directions and providing entirely different functions for passive insulation and energy generation. One of the roofed boxes, the sun-lit box, serves as the home’s sleeping quarters, storing the ample sunlight and heat during the day to keep the bedroom warm at night. Then, the escarpment-facing box is on the other side of things, receiving little to no direct sunlight during the day. These opposing orientations leave room for the roof’s 6.7KW solar system that generates power for everything from the underfloor heating and general electricity.

Additional heat is provided by a small wood-burning fireplace located in the home’s living area. Considering the termites that populate the Blue Mountains, Anderson Architecture built the Off Grid House out of concrete to ensure the pests don’t boor their way into the living room. Throughout the interior and exterior of the Off Grid House, the boundary between indoors and outdoors is blurred with sliding glass partitions, and an outdoor awning that retracts to form a semi-outdoor space or folds down to create a strictly indoor space.

Taking the local trend of wild bushfires into consideration, Anderson Architecture built a retractable metal screen to protect the home from extreme weather conditions. Describing the need for added protection against bushfires, Anderson Architecture describe,

“Low-carbon fiber cement board cladding and decking give the added appearance of timber with the durability of a high bushfire attack BAL 40 & BAL FZ house design performance. Keen to trial additional weather protection measures, we designed an experimental 2.4m external metal screen here. This acts as a wall that can be winched away out of sight is deployed as heavy rain protection, or could be lowered completely as a BAL FZ (flame zone) barrier in the event of a fire.” Then, when it rains, the roofs feed rainwater to water tanks that cap out at 30,000L.

Designer: Anderson Architecture

The outdoor deck creates a cozy semi-outdoor leisure area. 

Inside, clean lines and neutral color schemes provide the house with a calming ambiance. 

The post This net-zero off-grid home generates solar power to keep it running for the ultimate sustainable lifestyle! first appeared on Yanko Design.

This house made of wood, straw, and cork is a great example of modern, sustainable architectural design!

Posted on by

Somewhere on the outskirts of a small village in Italy, a couple of computer scientists call a simple farmhouse, built from wood, straw, and cork, home. Before either of us get any ideas, this isn’t a modern take on “The Three Little Pigs.” LCA Architetti, an architecture firm based in Milan, has finished work on The House of Wood, Straw, and Cork– a farmhouse-style home fittingly named for being primarily constructed from wood, straw, and cork.

The two-story farmhouse has a prefabricated timber structure that reflects the style of neighboring farmhouses and barns located in the immediate area. Blending with the surrounding countryside, The House of Wood, Straw, and Cork dons a grainy exterior with cladding formed from cork, a type of insulating material harvested from the bark of cork oak trees. The home is further insulated through the use of straw, which is traditionally used as an insulator for other rural dwellings like barns and henhouses. The straw insulation consists of repurposed discarded rice plants handed over by nearby farmers in the area.

Sustainability was a top priority in constructing The House of Wood, Straw, and Cork, and the house’s commitment to energy-efficiency is exhibited through the recycled material used for insulation, as well as the cluster of solar panels found on the home’s roof. Coupling the use of recycled straw and cork for insulation with photovoltaics for solar energy, The House of Wood, Straw, and Cork stands as a self-powered home, decreasing the overall consumption of energy and emissions of greenhouse gases like CO2.

The House of Wood, Straw, and Cork was built for a young couple of computer scientists who longed to work closer to nature and live a more sustainable lifestyle. To find harmony with the natural surroundings of Magnago, Italy, The House of Wood, Straw, and Cork is a sustainable house characterized by simple architecture. Everything from the materials used for construction to the chosen methods of insulation is dedicated to preserving the home’s natural surroundings.

Designer: LCA Architetti

The combination of straw insulation and cork cladding works to keep The House of Wood, Straw, and Cork both warm and eco-friendly.

Cork is a naturally durable, recyclable, and insulation construction material.

On one side of The House of Wood, Straw, and Cork a large, glass-paned window merge into the roof to provide additional skylight inside.

The two-story home features a living room at its center with high ceilings and an unobstructed view of the surrounding countryside.

Inside, a calming mix of natural smoothed over wood and cooled down stone walls enhance the home’s simple design.

Chromatic shading flows throughout the house, allowing for sharp angles to bring out the darker and brighter shades from the natural wood accents.

If You Want To Take Your Slow-Cooking Off The Grid, You’re Going To Need This Insulating Bag

Posted on by

wonderbag-1

Throwing stuff into a slow-cooker is both a lazy and a delicious way to cook. Done right, you get some tender meats and pretty powerful flavours, but lets face it: everything is soupy and to this editor, unexciting. That’s ok, that’s how some people roll. But if you want to take your slow-cooking skills to, say, a pot-luck dinner 6 hours away, it’s not normally going to work. Unless you get the Wonderbag. It’s a highly insulated bag in which you insert a pot with all your ingredients and boiling water. Seal it in, and the heat that you already put in stays in, cooking the food, albeit even more slowly than a regular crock pot. Granted it’s probably not super safe to be moving a gallon of boiling water anywhere, in a bag or not, but the idea here isn’t so much the portability of the procedure as much as the fact that it allows you to slow cook while using a lot less electricity. And for some, that’s important. Also, you can take a trip to the pub and not worry about leaving a hot appliance on in the house.

It’s $122.

wonderbag-2

[ Purchase Page ] AND [ Product Page ] VIA [ Gizmodo ]