Background
Anderson Acoustics was commissioned by Wild By Tart, Belgravia to provide design advice to control the reverberation time within several spaces of the existing restaurant/bar.
Wild By Tart was opened in October 2019, and provides approximately 840m2 of restaurant spaces, which includes a bar/lounge area, a private mezzanine dining area and a separate photography studio that also serves as an events space (where both amplified and live music is played).
The Challenge
The room acoustics within the existing restaurant/bar space was causing disturbance to both employees and customers due to the build up of occupant speech and the clanging of utensils reverberating throughout the space. Occupants were also experiencing issues with loud services, which can be disruptive when the restaurant is quieter and was compromising the acoustic comfort within the space.
The main acoustic parameters assessed were reverberation time (RT) and acoustic capacity. Coupled with a low ceiling height in some areas within the restaurant which limits the room volume, even moderately reverberant spaces can result in a build-up of occupied noise levels, resulting in poor speech clarity and intelligibility. This leads to an uncomfortable listening environment and poor communication for occupants, particularly those with special hearing and listening needs.
Multiple people speaking in a room can create a high noise level, due to the phenomenon when the ambient noise from the other people speaking means that everyone raises their voice, leading in turn to a spiraling ambient noise level (known as the Lombard Effect).
What we Did
We undertook an assessment of the current reverberation time within both the main restaurant area and the events space, allowing us to set out suitable target acoustic performance criteria for reverberation control. Outline advice on acoustic treatments was then provided to achieve the set target. Advice was also given to control noise from building services, whereby several mitigation measures were proposed.
