School of Art and Music Monheim

High Design and Sound Insulation Requirements

A showcase project, completed in 2015, is the new Monheim art and music school at the bustling Berliner Ring. Formerly spatially separated and to some extent provisionally housed in containers, a new building, which fulfilled all requirements for design and sound insulation had to be made available to the musical youth. Due to the glass curtain wall, which runs completely around the building, the two parts of the building seem to float on a plinth. The structural shells were arranged on four offset storeys connected in the middle by a glass runner, behind the staircases and elevators. In order to meet the special requirements of interior acoustics, none of the teaching rooms is designed rectangularly. The rather trapezoidal spaces, with their unnatural shape, placed a higher demand on the concave-shaped outer curtain wall and thus, on the surveying and structural engineering. Special attention had to be paid to the sound insulation. The sound insulation requirements were between 33 dB and 45 dB in the finished state. Due to the generous windows, the north-oriented art rooms also have optimum lighting conditions.