A concert hall, recording studios and rehearsal rooms – you might think they fit together perfectly. But think again and it looks like a recipe for disaster. Because how are you supposed to record or mix a CD in peace in a recording studio when next door there's a brass band rehearsing or a full orchestra and choir performing "Ode to Joy"? For the walls and ceilings of the concert hall, several layers of Fermacell boards were firstshaped and glued or clamped together before the surface was finally completed. So when it came to building a new concert hall for Danmarks Radio in Copenhagen, issues of acoustics and noise insulation were at the top of the agenda right from the start.
The spectacular 1,800- seat hall was not going to be easy to build in the first place. The plans of French star architect Jean Nouvel provided for a room with no signs of symmetry, one that makes more use of curves and arcs than right angles. In their search for a building material capable of creating such challenging shapes – and above all one that did not generate natural vibrations which would be transmitted to neighbouring rooms – the planners hit upon Fermacell gypsum fibreboards. Detailed planning and fabrication were handled by Voringer, a company based in Töging, Upper Bavaria, which has developed a process to shape the boards. A computer model of the room with its more than 33,000 square metres of wall and ceiling area was converted into a gigantic jigsaw puzzle made up of 8,600 different pieces.
The initially flat Fermacell boards were shaped to the required radii and screwed and glued together to form multi-layer elements. All the parts were then numbered and packaged before being shipped north from southern Germany. The total weight of the consignment was around 330 tonnes. During installation on site in Copenhagen, a job similarly carried out by a southern German firm, Lindner AG from Arnstorf, there was another issue to deal with. In order to ensure that the complete interior finishing of the concert hall was acoustically decoupled, the substructure, which according to the initial plans was to be made of steel, was also constructed from gypsum fibre – an idea proposed by Voringer which eventually won out.
"It seems we won the contract because we quoted for something different from what was wanted," says a proud company founder Franz Voringer. In the end, the elements were fixed to gypsum fibre frames like the planks of a ship. Up to five layers of gypsum fibreboards weighing up to100 kilograms per square metre were used. It was a three-dimensional puzzle of giant proportions. To provide the flexibility to respond to various acoustic requirements, a 75-tonne height-adjustable ceiling canopy, also covered with Fermacell boards, was installed above the orchestra floor. As the main ceiling is also panelled with gypsum fibreboards and there are Fermacell screed elements beneath the parquet floor, literally the entire hall will be enclosed by acoustically decoupled Fermacell products. From an acoustic point of view, it will be a building within a building from which no noise or vibrations can penetrate to neighbouring rooms.
Thanks to the good fire protection properties of the gypsum fibreboards,the hall will provide a particularly high degree of safety in addition to its appealing architecture and excellent acoustics. So it’s a job well done for Fermacell in Copenhagen. The concert hall is set to be officially opened in January 2009 when Queen Margrethe II will give the royal seal of approval for Danmarks Radio’s new premises.
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