Financial Times, Bracken House
Project summary
Bracken House on London’s Cannon Street was fully refurbished for the return of the Financial Times (FT) to its former premises.
Sandy Brown were appointed by the Financial Times to advise on the Cat-B office fit-out and the basement broadcasting studio facility.
The Cat B fit-out, for approximately 1600 staff, comprises a meeting room suite, executive suite, café and restaurant intended for Town Hall use, main and satellite equipment rooms, open plan and cellular offices and ancillary spaces such as a generator room and roof plant.
The basement studio comprises a TV studio and associated control rooms. The studio is close to the District and Circle London Underground train lines (approximately 20 metres away), therefore ground-borne noise was an important consideration.
Sandy Brown worked closely with the studio designer, Wave Science Technology, to deliver a high specification facility including an acoustically isolated box-in-box TV studio to mitigate ground-borne noise.
Acoustic considerations
Sandy Brown undertook surveys and analysis to assess the levels of intrusive re-radiated noise to the basement studio facilities. Vibration isolated box-in-box constructions were deployed to reduce the train noise to a level suitable for high-end recording.
Bespoke broadband acoustic wall absorbers were designed and installed to achieve a low reverberation, flat room response in the studios and control rooms. A slow speed, highly attenuated mechanical services system was devised to ensure subjectively silent ventilation and cooling to the technical spaces.
Within the office spaces, acoustic design was centred on achieving appropriate levels of speech privacy between spaces and controlling noise from building services to acceptable levels. Audio demonstrations were given early in the project to aid the client in deciding on the acoustic standards that would be suitable for the various parts of the business. Additionally, there was a requirement to ensure that reverberation within the meeting rooms does not significantly affect speech intelligibility nor result in excessive noise build-up in other areas.
