The redevelopment of Blacon Crematorium in Cheshire began in April 2012. The project was to build a new crematorium on the site of the older, existing building. The new building with its distinctive design incorporated a number of innovative environmental benefits along with creating a more uplifting and comforting environment.
The new crematorium was inspired by the desire to create a naturalistic organic building, non-assertive, non-denominational, and respectful of people’s beliefs. The iconic roof structure is a timber geodesic roof shell with large west-facing full-height windows. The new building includes a chapel seating 160 people, a gallery/waiting area, plant rooms and small office spaces. New and better access and parking was another important part of the design. The project targeted a BREEAM Very Good rating.

Sandy Brown was appointed to review and provide acoustic design advice particularly relating to meeting the requirements for BREEAM.
Pre-completion acoustic testing was also carried out at the site to demonstrate compliance with the relevant BREEAM credits.

The key acoustic design considerations for the project are set out below:

• Room acoustics in the chapel – a 3D computed model was created.
• Acoustic finishes were advised to control sound focusing from the curved walls/roof and to control reverberation to provide suitable conditions for good speech intelligibility
• The control of noise transfer from the plant rooms to atmosphere and to chapel
• Providing low building services noise levels within the chapel
• The control of rain noise drumming and flanking transfer via the lightweight roof
• Internal sound insulation and indoor ambient noise levels to meet with the BREEAM Hea 13 credit requirements.