5.7 Sustainable Acoustic Absorption

Acoustic absorption is often based around mineral wool, a product containing huge level of embodied energy along with the negative impact of rock extraction. Alternatively absorption can be provided from sheep’s wool 1, recycled plastic bottles 2, recycled cloth 3, mashed up newspapers 4, wood scraps 5, recycled car dashboards 6, recycled cloth/foam and so on.

Architecturally, sheep’s wool and other green acoustic absorbers need to be fi nished for aesthetic reasons and to enhance robustness. This architectural finish is simply required to be acoustically transparent; such as perforated wood/metal, tissues, cloth, felts and other finishes.

MACH Acoustics has proposed to use a waste product from Tandem Chairs for one of our green projects 8. These chairs are formed from routed plywood sheets such to make the elements making up the Tandem Chair. The waste product is a plywood sheet containing large holes 9. These holes could be slightly reshaped and covered with black tissue.

Illustration 7 shows the use of Bamboo for providing an architectural acoustically transparent finish