Heradesign brings creativity and acoustic intelligence to new schools

Heradesign has been installed in two brand new school buildings located in the Birmingham area, to meet a variety of acoustic and aesthetic requirements. St Albans Academy is a brand new £17.6 million school. The state of the art building boasts some of the best design technology and engineering facilities alongside a new sports hall, fitness suites and classrooms with stunning views across the city. Moseley School has a new purpose built £20 million building equipped with outstanding facilities. Around 500m2 Heradesign tiles were chosen for the Academy’s covered entrance and central atrium. The tiles were installed in vertical stripes, alternating with spruce plywood cladding, to provide significant acoustic benefits to an otherwise hard, reverberant space. Inside the building, natural coloured Heradesign ceiling tiles were used in a 600 x 600mm lay-in grid ceiling to help differentiate significant communal spaces from the white tiles used elsewhere. These key spaces emphasise the axis that runs through the heart of the Academy, visually linking with the neighbouring St Albans Church to the city centre skyline. In addition, stripes of Heradesign ceiling tiles have been used in the teaching spaces to emphasise the direction of the teaching wall and provide visual variation against the regular ceiling tiles. The opportunities offered by the coloured Heradesign tiles have really been exploited in the sports hall. A mix of golden mustard coloured tiles and tiles with natural colours have been used to create a checker-board design across the upper levels of the wall producing a cheerful and light environment in which to exercise; whilst the sound absorption nature of the panels help satisfy the acoustic arrangements and help limit the potential for noise. Around 480m2 Hera Superfine in a natural colour finish has been installed in six classrooms at Moseley School. Excellent acoustic properties of Heradesign benefit these large classrooms. Heradesign is a range of wood wool ceilings manufactured using sustainable materials and technologies, including wood fibres from PEFC certified sources, which offer outstanding sound absorption and impact resistance. Different thicknesses of wood wool fibres give a distinctive surface finish to each panel in the range, with fibres ranging from just 1mm thick in Heradesign Superfine to 3mm in Heradesign Macro. The tiles are available in any (RAL, NCS & Sto Colour) as natural and white as standard. Easy and quick to install, the tiles can be suspended using a traditional ceiling grid or directly fixed onto wooden battens or MF system. Further options are available in the form of ceiling rafts and baffles for areas where acoustic control is required. Individual panels can be hung as fins or wall mounted, offering a flexible design solution with almost limitless possibilities.