Farrat’s new cinema floating floor range, CineFLOOR, was recently used to acoustically isolate the first VOX Cinema in Egypt located inside North Africa’s largest shopping mall. In this Case Study, we overview the acoustic challenge faced by the project team and the solution supplied by Farrat.
The Challenge
The Mall of Egypt, which officially opened in 2017 in Cairo, was developed by Majid Al Futtaim at a cost of USD $708m and is the largest mall in North Africa spanning 400,000 sq.m. The two-story complex brings Egypt’s first VOX Cinema, with a total of 21 theatres housing; 1x 4DX screen, 4x Gold screens, 1x IMAX screen, 2x screens for kids and 13 regular screens.
With a total of 2473 seats, the design and build of the cinema auditorium required expert configuration to ensure maximum entertainment value for viewers inside and minimal disruption to the surrounding 165,000 sq.m of retail space.
The brief was particularly challenging as cinema auditoria were adjacent vertically as well as horizontally.
Farrat were contacted during the design phase to design, manufacture and supply a workable sound insulation system, to acoustically isolate the 21 auditoria to VOX’s high acoustic performance standards.
The Farrat Solution
Following an initial enquiry from the client’s architect, Farrat met with the main contractor and local architect in Egypt as well as the acoustic consultant in the UK, to discuss the full acoustic requirements of the project. It was determined that a minimum Natural Frequency of 12Hz was required within each theatre.
After reviewing the requirements against the Farrat range, Farrat CineFLOOR PRO was identified as the most suitable and versatile grade of acoustic isolation to configure the acoustic floating floors within all 21 auditoria.
CineFLOOR PRO is the most frequently specified grade of cinema isolation, as products within this range offer the highest ratio of acoustic isolation performance vs. price in the market.
The floors were also reinforced using CineWALL PRO as partition isolation – soon to be released to the wider market in 2019.
Logistics & Installation
Once the CineFLOOR systems were manufactured, Farrat worked closely with AL Dhabi Contracting to liaise importing and installing the systems on site in Egypt.
AL Dhabi Contracting were founded in 1998 and are an authorised Farrat distribution partner in Egypt. AL Dhabi Contracting is also one of the largest drylining companies in the country and represent a number of prestigious UK drylining brands in the region, including Farrat.Farrat handled all export logistics including packing materials in secure IPPC heat-treated pallets certified for airfreight to Egypt, as well as all export documentation including Certificate of Origin and Certificate of Conformity.
AL Dhabi Contracting then handled all import logistics including customs tariffs and delivery to site.
Once the materials arrived in Egypt, Farrat visited site on a number of occasions to inspect the integrity and placement of the acoustic isolators and to train AL Dhabi’s installation team.
Overseeing the installation process in this manner ensured that all details were correctly constructed and that the acoustic specification was fully achieved.
The Result
All 21 screens are fully acoustically isolated and open to the public at VOX Cinema, Mall of Egypt. Both the architect and the acoustic consultant are satisfied with the quality of the Farrat acoustic detailing, which meets the acoustic specification and the clients high acoustic standards.
Farrat has designed and delivered acoustic isolation solutions for many of the world’s largest and most striking multiplex cinema projects and the Building Acoustics team at Farrat has decades of experience creating state-of-the-art acoustic environments within cinemas.
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