Royal College of General Practioners

United Kingdom

Main Contractor & Client

Structuretone

Architect

Tilney Shane

Acoustic Consultant

Cole Jarman

Steelwork Fabricator

DMR Structural

Key Facts

290 seat auditorium + 6 disabled

212m² of Isomat Acoustic Floating Floors

700 Isomat Floating Floor Isolators

22 Natural Rubber Laminated Bearings for Seating Structure

The Challenge

Euston Square houses the headquarters of the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP). As part of a major £22 million refurbishment of the 10,000 sq ft of space at 30 Euston Square there would be a key requirement for building isolation for the building’s main lecture theatre situated in the basement. The objective was to control noise intrusion from re-radiated noise from underground trains coming into and going out of the nearby Euston Station.

There were some particular challenges posed by virtue of the fact that the building is Grade II listed and structural changes were planned, as well as an internal fit-out to accommodate 350 employees of the college. The other key requirement would be to isolate the internal elements of the auditorium from the surrounding buildings including University College Hospital and University College London using a box-in-box type construction.

The floating floor itself would need to be designed to achieve not more than 12Hz which would provide around 96-98% isolation from the disturbing rail frequencies which peaked at around 100Hz.

The Solution

The Acoustic Consultant tasked Farrat with providing acoustic isolation to the floor and seating structures. From this the acoustic inner box walls could be installed and the acoustic ceiling was suspended using resilient hangers from the structural ceiling.

Farrat’s significant experience of such applications from numerous cinemas, concert halls and other auditoria meant that we could offer a hands-on service taking the acoustic consultant’s requirements, the un-factored dead and live loadings from the structural engineer and the connection details from the steelwork fabricator. We then worked closely with the steelwork fabricator (DMR Structural) to ensure that each isolator would fit.

As well as working alongside numerous other contractors our specialist AcouStruct installation team worked around the logistical constraints of the auditorium being in the basement as well as the fact that the building was not yet watertight. An adjacent street had to be temporarily closed off in order to place the pump for the concrete pour and a 60 metre concrete pipeline was used to get the concrete into basement. Our experienced and pro-active team installed the entire floating concrete slab in just four days.