Call center, Berlin

Optimal working conditions at the call centre: pinta BALANCE maintains sound levels at an equilibrium.

SNT Deutschland AG, a nationwide call-centre enterprise, wanted to improve workplace conditions for its staff members at its Berlin branch. The enterprise had rented several floors on Lützow Street in Berlin's Tiergarten district. Established on each floor was a open-plan office in which several areas such as project and conference rooms had to be demarcated. This resulted in 75 to 80 workplaces on an area of roughly 400 square meters.
Despite modern office furniture capable of lowering the transmission of sound between employees sitting opposite each other, however, the fundamental noise level generated here notably impaired working conditions. SNT Deutschland AG then commissioned SHS, an architects' office, with the planning and implementation of sound insulation measures based on this office's substantial experience in upgrading recording studios. Besides developing functional solutions to sound insulation problems, an imperative task here was to reflect the corporate design of SNT Deutschland AG.

The ideal solution among a host of options
The planners had to meet diverse requirements taking local conditions into consideration. The premises were not ideal in terms of sound propagation properties. In addition to the reinforced-concrete walls and ceilings, the fittings in the rooms mainly comprised wood and glass elements possessing "hard surfaces". These have an unfavorable effect on reverberation times in the rooms. The architects' best solution would have consisted of mutually confining the sound sources, i.e. the individual workplaces, by means of absorber panels mounted at the sides and on top. However, this was not possible in view of the regulatory authorities' requirement to have unhindered visual contact in the open-plan office.

As an alternative, the planners then considered implementing measures on the ceilings, walls and floors. For hygienic reasons, however, improvements to the floor were not permissible. Noise reduction measures on the available wall surfaces also fell out of consideration in view of the regulatory authorities' requirement for partitioning walls made of glass.

As a result, measures for improvement were restricted mainly to the ceilings. A retrofitting of grid ceilings or closed, suspended ceilings was also out of the question. Such ceilings cannot be installed during ongoing operations or in restricted time slots, as was the requirement here. Furthermore, such ceilings would have changed the room's proportions very unfavorably, given a spatial depth of up to 16 meters and a headroom of about 3 meters.
Plaster systems were not an option either, because the workstations and computers on the various floors are connected via elaborate data links, cannot be re-located easily and are manned 24 hours a day.

pinta BALANCE provided the solution
After intensive research, the architects decided to use the BALANCE ceiling cloud system from pinta acoustic. It proved extremely suitable for meeting the variety of demands. Large sails (or clouds) sized 3.00 m x 1.25 m were arranged at equal distances precisely above each workplace (source), thus ideally attenuating the emitted sound. Each element was suspended at just four points using threaded rods. Installation was performed from the passageways between the individual workplaces. This made it possible to leave all fittings and furniture inside the rooms during installation.

A total of 161 ceiling clouds were installed on three floors. Following definition of the installation axes, the substructure comprising threaded rods and Z-profiles was mounted. It took the skilled workers one Saturday (including the night) to mount the substructure over a total area of 640 square meters. Delivered by pinta acoustic in the ready-to-install state, the elements were supplemented on two further, separate occasions. This was possible during ongoing operations at the call centre – which is manned 24 hours a day – the only task still required being suspension of the clouds. Alignment of the ceiling elements did not pose any problems either.

Tidy appearance with perfect sound insulation properties
The circumferential aluminum profile ideally matches the modern furniture on the premises. The load-bearing profile offered by pinta acoustic can be mounted on both sides, rendering visible either the narrow, 1.4-mm aluminum edge or the wide, 1.0-cm aluminum cover frame. The sound absorption elements integrated into the frames at SNT Deutschland AG had a format of 2 x 20 mm. For design-related reasons (headroom of 3 meters), the ceiling was not closed. Possessing ideal acoustic properties, the ceiling clouds have a slightly rough but otherwise closed surface and blend harmoniously and inconspicuously into the overall context. In addition, the employed material has a light reflection coefficient of 87% which ensures stable light conditions in the rooms.

pinta creates quiet spaces
The pinta BALANCE system of ceiling clouds was easy to install due to its high degree of prefabrication. The high demands placed on corporate design were fulfilled. The area manager summarizes the ceiling system's excellent attributes as follows: "When I arrived today at the office, it was so quiet that I thought nobody else was there yet".

Project data

• Client: SNT Deutschland AG
• Planning and design: SHS Architects, Schlesische Straße 29 / 30, 10997 Berlin, Phone: +49-30-61789530
• Subcontractor: Stefan Stift GmbH
• System: pinta BALANCE ceiling cloud