Surface Design Awards – Complete

• COMMERCIAL BUILDING - INTERIOR
  Commercial Buildings that are used for commercial purposes, and include retail, hospitality, workplaces, factories and warehouses and buildings where commercial services are provided. At least 50 percent of the buildings’ floor space will be used for commercial activities.

Split into a Control Room (25m²) and a Vocal Booth (11m²), the core brief for Suite X was to deliver a world-leading music production suite from scratch at Metropolis Studios.

Unlike the rest of the studios at Metropolis, all centred around large analogue consoles, the new studio needed to provide a completely digital workflow to support the creative needs of today’s and the next-generation of UK’s leading Artists and Producers. Whilst providing a modern, multi-functional hub approach to production, the design conversely, was to provide a sophisticated and vintage backdrop conducive to indie bands bunkering down for long, late night writing sessions, right through to A-Listers dropping in to record vocals for a few hours, or using the space to live stream shows from.

Some of the general brief vocabulary used by the client included: environment; quipment; acoustics; clients with eclectic needs; multifunctional use.

The project was signed off December 29th 2022, detailed planning, design, costing and scheduling followed between January and March 2023, with a 14 week build kicking off in April and the studio delivered on time and on budget on July 4th. The overall project cost was £230,000 with £45,000 attributed to the design (planning and delivery of materials / lighting / furniture / fixtures).

In terms of design, the acoustic treatment needed to support a studio with an extreme level of acoustic precision, which meant working backwards from the large open-plan space introduced in the initial recce to the heavily scaled back structural plans.

The task was to come up with clear solutions on how to make the space flow, be luxurious and warm, and importantly, not feel claustrophobic.

We addressed these through:

use of subtle, sumptuous tones of woodlands to give a deep sense of calm and restfulness, together with rich smoked timber finishes and rusty burnt orange hues to present a nurturing space for growth and creativity. The colour scheme encompassed the feeling of being enveloped within the space, building a sense of warmth, capturing the inspiration and imagination of the end user.

incorporating natural daylight to the room using clerestory windows to avoid looking onto the neighbouring buildings whilst bringing in light and a view of the sky which is unusual for recording studios.

incorporating large glass viewing panels to create a deeper sense of space and extending the flow of the area from the booth through to the control room.

woven acoustic echopanel - with a subtle wave design through carved bevelled edging, etched into each board to form a subtle ebb and flow pattern which is also closely linked to the forms associated with the 1970’s retro era.

vertical flow acoustic panels in a smoked oak finish to enhance the low ceiling height and draw the eye up in order to give the illusion of elevation, bringing a sense of warmth, elegance and height to the overall design scheme.

fabric for walls and ceiling - Subtle, enveloping tones of forestland giving a deep sense of calm and restfulness with an understated elegance, refined in its coloration, this choice exudes serenity and style, the fabric; taken up the walls and over the ceiling concealed any edges in order to create a greater sense of space.

using vertical sconce lighting, selected to amplify the perpendicular panels applied to the surrounding walls drawing the eye up to give the appearance of elongation.

a soft wave form design carpet, installed within the booth floor. The characteristics, inspired by nature had been chosen not only to acoustically treat the space and help minimise any damage to the floor whilst equipment is manoeuvred around the space. A subtle rust tone had been selected to incorporate into the nature inspired/retro colour palette, the remaining carpet had been made up to create a rug for the control room lounge chairs to sit under and to dampen noise and aid the preservation of the engineered timber flooring.

Herringbone engineered smoked oak flooring, installed to the Control Room, a hard wearing and long lasting option, allowing for a vintage feel, working cohesively with the design brief and mimicking the direction of the 'Wave' wall to wall carpet.

Door and window frames spray finished to a Ral colour colour matched to the wall treated fabric together with the acoustic panelling.

Swivel Armchair incorporates a retro feel, with comfort at the forefront. The design worked cohesively with the overall look.

Bespoke control desk designed by Piotr Predkiewicz to accommodate the requirements of a work desk.

The Control Room is centred around a bespoke workstation with access to lots of instrumentation and line of sight into the booth.

Breakdown of materials used:

Acu Panel slatted wall panels used for its textured appearance.
Woven Acoustic Echopanel, sustainable and beautifully textured.
Kilter Wall light, well made, effective architectural lighting.
Reform New Wave carpet, sculptural patterns with interesting use of hues.
Space, high quality finish oak flooring, sustainably sourced.
Sumi Fabric, woven from worsted wool using fine marl yarns. A natural textile that embraces a purity of composition and has a simple aesthetic.
IAC Acoustic door and windows for quality and effective sound dampening treatment.
Black Armadillo Swivel Armchair for structure and comfort.
Coffee Table for excellent craftsmanship and quality.
Dapper Lounge chair for excellent craftsmanship and quality.
Mustard Made Storage for it's simple design and is well put together.
Acoustic treatment: timber framing, high density plasterboard, rockwool, sand, Basotect melamine-based foam.

Using materials where possible with sustainable credentials as follows:

Camira - Sumi - UN CPC Classification Code Group 265 Class 2653 95% Wool, 5% Polyamide Area Density (g/m2) 340 Camira Facility Location - Meltham Mills, UK 95% Wool – New Zealand 5% Polyamide – Bulgaria - Fibre was dyed, Spun and woven. Upstream Processes Wool Yarn Greasy Wool - market for sheep fleece in the grease | sheep fleece in the grease | EN15804, U - GLO Scouring, carding, and combing - market for electricity, medium voltage | electricity, medium voltage | EN15804, U –NZ; market for heat, district or industrial, natural gas | heat, district or industrial, natural gas | EN15804, U – RoW

EchoPanel® is an award-winning, felt-like acoustic panel made from 60% recycled plastic bottles that absorb up to 85% of sound waves. 24mm thick panels can be ordered in their raw format* and worked into a huge variety of applications, from acoustic wall cladding, pinboards, furniture, joinery items, product packaging solutions and more. EchoPanel® is a superior up-cycled product with a 10-year life expectancy, after which the material is 100% recyclable. Achieving numerous environmental certifications including Global GreenTag™ certified with a Platinum Product Health Declaration, low Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC), Red-List free, and has published ingredient transparency through Declare. 100% PET (60% Post-consumer recycled) ASTM D5116: TVOC Emissions Rate: <0.02mg/m2/hr (7 days), andCDPH Standard Method v1.2: TVOC Emissions Rate: <0.054mg/m3; Formaldehyde Emissions Rate: <2μg/m3

Wood Veneer Hub / Acupanel is FSC certified - FSC C014456 All of the materials are sourced from certified sustainable sources— a complete environmentally friendly product.

Elesco / Space collection is aimed at the contract market, the timber is both FSC® certified and part of the Timber Neutral scheme, using sustainably sourced oak, replanting trees to cover the floors produced. The floor is finished in a factory in York, and is UK made.

Ege Carpets collection is crafted from regenerated and regenerable yarns. Based on abandoned fishing nets and other industrial waste, the choice of yarn brings an attractive and sustainable solution. he yarn manufacturers specialise in collecting used nylon products which have reached the end of their product life (example: used carpeting) ,have been left in the wild or industrial areas (example: discarded fishing nets left behind in the oceans) and are residual products from the manufacturing of other products (example: textile waste products from clothing manufacturing) All three examples involve a refining process. For the used carpets, the carpet fibres are cut away from the backing. The used fishing nets are cleaned and cut into smaller pieces, and the textile waste products are also cut into small pieces. Next, they enter the same refining process where they break down into their original chemical formula in the form of nylon chips. They are then included as raw materials in the manufacturing of new Nylon 6 nylon products – including carpet yarn.

ROCKWOOL products contribute to credits under sustainable building rating schemes such as LEED®, BREEAM, DGNB (German Sustainable Buildings Council) and HQE (Haute Qualite Environnementale).

Basotect melamine-based foam - Circular economy is a principle already in practice at BASF. It includes using resources wisely and designing products with the minimum amount of waste and impact on the environment. The goal is to move away from a linear model of “take, make, dispose” toward a regenerative, circular model where resources are reused and recycled and waste is reduced. No one organisation can create the circular economy. It requires all of us in the plastic value chain to align. By giving plastics a new life, you and BASF can create unique opportunities that enable a circular future.

Hay optimises the use of sustainable materials such as recycled materials, FSC-certified wood and water-based lacquer, with a growing number of eco-certified products. Hay has strict regulatory requirements, and the majority of their products are tested to comply with international standards for strength, durability and safety.

Tala build sustainability into every product, choosing responsibly sourced, recyclable materials like aluminium and hardwoods. Avoiding plastic at all costs.

The space itself, previously a set of working offices located on the ground floor of a Grade II listed Power House, with two of the worlds best mastering engineers located directly above, presented a lot of structural and acoustic complexities which needed to be navigated.

The open planned offices featured some of the building's original structural features, namely columns. We were adamant that these should be part of the room. Designing large viewing panels that sandwich the column on one side of the brickwork, with the heavily glazed acoustic door on the other, connecting the two rooms together which allowed us to retain the column.

Patch bays located on every wall to enable clients to work from all corners, we devised a secret hatch underneath the work station supplying connectivity from all over the studio, directly into the desk’s built-in hardware and computers.

The huge RSJ metal beams that run across the studio presented an awkward problem of how to finish them. Moulded into the design by cladding and applied in a way that carries the wave design around the beams effortlessly.

Despite having a retro basement feel to the studio, we incorporated natural daylight from the external walls of the building. The view into the car park and neighbouring brick walls is not particularly compelling so we devised a scheme with the builders to bleed slithers of celestial light into both the Control and the Booth utilising the studio shell as a conduit to the outside world.