29. May 2019

Silentmesh: CMP fabric creates pleasant room acoustics

In the heart of the La Défense office district in Paris, the 135-meter Tour Europlaza office tower sets standards for sustainable construction. It has received the HQE exploitation & BREEAM in-use certification "Very Good" not once but twice. Silentmesh acoustic systems made from CMP fabric from GKD – GEBR. KUFFERATH AG considerably improve the ambiance of the large entrance hall in the building as acoustically effective room dividers and decorative wall cladding.

Planned at the end of the 1950s as a new center for service companies, over 2,500 firms now occupy office space of around 3.8 million square meters in La Défense. The Tour Europlaza was built in 1972 and completely renovated in 2014. A garden area featuring seating and trees that extends over 3,300 square meters serves as a place to relax and recoup. This generous green area is a refreshing contrast to the surrounding tower blocks and earned the building the nickname of Tour Jardin (garden tower). In the fully renovated entrance area, interior designer Juan Trindade created an ambiance that is both spectacular and inviting. Ceiling-high mirror columns along the entire length of the window façade give a sense of optical breadth to the long, narrow entrance area. They also reflect the outdoor environment, creating a seamless transition from inside to outside. The fronts of the columns are clad with champagne-colored CMP fabric. These sandwich panels are made of a ten-centimeter-thick aluminum honeycomb plate with laminated ALU 6010 surface layer. Two of these panels, measuring three meters high and one meter wide, are arranged on top of each other on the side of each of the columns facing the room. Room dividers clad on each side with CMP fabric are used to lend specific structure to the entrance hall. Combined with the gray thick-pile rugs, their natural aluminum tone forms a gentle contrast to the warm champagne of the columns and the light sandy hue of the floor and wall cladding. Their free-standing arrangement breaks up the visual openness of the lobby and forms discreet informal meeting and seating areas. Decorative, free-standing balustrade elements separate the access areas to the elevators from the public areas. Thanks to their highly effective sound absorption, the CMP elements contribute effectively to optimizing the room acoustics in the entrance hall, which is dominated by reverberant glass and concrete surfaces, and create a pleasant ambiance. The refined interplay of light and reflections continually lends the metallic fabric new facets that set emotional accents in the puristic appearance of the lobby.