Blacon Crematorium
Project Summary
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.
Services Provided
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.
Special Acoustic Features
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.