General headquarters, Belgium

Car manufacturer

Acoustic management of a single, multi-use space containing offices, workshops, a canteen and showroom.

This motor manufacturers HQ contains 4,000m2 of offices on four floors, surrounding a central atrium. The site also includes mechanic workshops, a 700m2 showroom, and overlooking the showroom and visitors reception a company canteen, set on a mezzanine floor.

In wishing to equip the building with easily identifiable ‘zones’, the number of separating partitions were kept to a minimum, allowing the showroom, company canteen, atrium and offices to all occupy one and the same area.

Such a combination of multi-use areas under a single roof created obvious communal benefits but also acoustical challenges. When staff moved in, there was totally inadequate protection between the various areas.

Faced with the noise disturbance between the different open plan areas around the atrium, the transmission of noise from the canteen to the surrounding offices, and the task of maintaining confidentiality for business dealings in the showroom, the architect had naturally considered isolating the canteen from other areas using glass partitions.

However, installing LogiSon sound masking allowed these significant investments to be avoided and retained the designer’s vision of complete openness.

Client testimonial

We wanted to conduct a test with sound masking… then one morning I asked for the system to be switched off. The reaction was quick in coming: people came to see me, asking what was going on!