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Fellert Ultra acoustical ceiling at Kauffman center for performing arts in Kansas City

The well known architect Moshe Saftdie did an excellent work on designing the new performing arts centre in Kansas City.

We don’t mind that he used almost 4000 m2 of Fellert Ultra acoustical ceilings in his design.

Look at the gallery below to see some pictures of the wonderful Fellert Ultra ceiling with credit to David Riffel and follow this link to see the FLICKR gallery posted by the gallery themselves.

to the FLICKR gallery

Ban all fillers

At Fellert we took a decision several years ago to ban all use of fillers when installing our system. At about the same time we invented a special clip for mechanical fastening of our absorbent boards to suspension grids and thereby also banned the use of washers (discs).

The reason for this is quite logical. In order to be a sound absorbing surface it needs to be porous, where the sound energy will find the pores and while using them to penetrate the material its energy will be absorbed by the “walls” in each pore, like this:

In addition to this you will also have a “micro climate”  with air flowing through the absorbent board. This works as a chimney where there is a difference in temperature below and above the absorbent board. This thermic difference will start the air to flow from the warmer area towards the colder area. This airflow will bring with it, airborne particles such as dust, sooth etc. and these particles will attach to the surface and some of them will also penetrate the pores of the porous absorber.

If you are using a filler to fill up the joints of the absorbent boards, this filler will not have the same porosity as the rest of the absorbent. Most likely it is of higher density and less porous than the surrounding material. The air flowing through the absorbent will not be able to flow through the filler the same way as it will through the surrounding material. Less air will flow through the surface with a filler backing, which in turn means that less dust and sooth will get attached to the surface and penetrate the pores.

The result will be white grid marks and dots in your seamless acoustical ceiling.

This can easily be prevented by banning use of fillers and disc washers, which we did several years ago.

Take a look a the step by step installation guide to get more information on how to install Fellert. You’ll find it at https://www.fellert.com/facts-of-fellert/instructions/

Reasons to go seamless

95% of all ceilings installed around the world are not seamless acoustical. Most of them are painted drywall or gypsum plastered or when sound absorption is the priority, absorbing tiles.
Regardless of how hard Ecophon and Armstrong tries, absorbing tiles are not beautiful. They are not something you hang up for the beautiful design. They provide a function, they solve a problem, that’s it.
Gypsum plaster, stucco or just painted drywall can look astonishly beautiful. Clean, clear lines. Smooth and seamless, but once the beautiful design is set, someone’s got to solve the problem. Diffusers, absorbing clouds, panels, furniture, carpet, you name it, and part of the magic is gone.

We who work with seamless acoustical ceiling systems, like to think that we are sitting on the perfect solution. The ideal combination of a smooth, clean, seamless look and excellent sound absorption. Design and function in one package.

Still 95% of all ceilings are not seamless acoustical ceilings and i like to understand why?

Is it because of the price? Seamless acoustical ceilings are more expensive than than absorbing tiles and have a history of being overpriced.

Is it because it has a reputation of in need of frequent maintenance and being difficult and expensive t to repair?

Is is because it is a fixed installation with limited accessibility to installations above the “false ceiling”?

or is it simply because there isn’t enough knowledge of the product and its possibilities?

If anyone’s sitting on the answer, or having an opinion, post a comment!

Bloody Mary in hotel bar in GDansk

The Fellert quest for the perfect Bloody Mary continues, this time in Poland.

Great taste but it could have been a bit more spicy. Very nicely presented and definitely an extra point for the decorations.

We’ll rate this 7 Baldheads out of 10.

The current top three standings are, so far:

The Knickerbocker Hotel, Chicago                       10 Baldheads

Lobby bar at Hilton, London                                    7 Baldheads

Hotel bar in GDansk                                               7 Baldheads

Acoustic treatment makes a difference

If you haven’t been exposed to the magic of acoustical plaster yet, make sure to take your time and play the two Youtube videos in the bottom of this blog-post.

It is when you enter a room in the size of a cathedral but when you start to speak it sounds like you are standing in your own living room, you start to believe in magic.

This is why we are so proud of our fantastic product. The main part of all acoustical problems due to long reverberation times (echoes) will be solved just by replacing your ordinary ceiling with a Fellert acoustical ceiling. Great, isn’t it?

Let’s get to the more practical section of this post:

Look at this picture. This is a model made in the EASE software by the acoustic consultant Soliflex Svenska AB.

It is a schematic model of an auditorium where the chair illustrates the centre of the audience and the small blue dots are speakers.

Below are two different audio simulations (Auralizations) of this auditorium. The first one on the left are untreated while the one on the right are treated with Fellert Alpha 39 mm on ceilings and back walls.

EASE on untreated auditorium                                                   EASE simulation FELLERT acoustical system

The Eggshell effect

Eggs are remarkable creations. Not only because they are the beginning of a new life or because they are good and healthy eating.

In this case i’m thinking more about the design of the egg. A soft core is surrounded by a thin hard shell with a smooth texture. if you hold it in your hand or expose it to light pressure, it feels solid as a rock, but to a limit, where the pressure reaches a certain point, the thin shell gives in and cracks up in dozens of pieces. Once it is broken you will never be able to put the pieces back again.

Compare it with a grapefruit or an orange. The shells of those are softer and flexes with the pressure they are exposed to. The risk is relatively small that it will crack and fall into multiple pieces.

I guess everyone has guessed where i’m going by now.

If you have a hard core, it will definitely go best together with a hard shell.

If you have a soft core, you’d better go for a soft shell to avoid the eggshell effect.

If you have a soft core and a hard shell, you are living in an illusion and i wish you good luck. You are going to need it.

The Fellert Acoustical Ceiling systems Alpha, Ultra and Even Better are all soft core, soft shell products. We are constantly patronized by our competitors who promotes the soft core, hard shell combination.

This Hard shell illusion looks very good as a small sample given to the architect. But an architectural sample is one thing and a 1000 m2 ceiling is another thing.

We at Fellert are very proud of our Reactivation technology which makes it possible for us to patch repair a damaged ceiling. For most people a patch repair is something ugly, but with Fellert it isn’t. In fact you will not be able to see the patch repair at all, if it is correctly done.

A damaged soft core, hard shell system is something completely different. A patch repair in such a ceiling will look like an infected spot, impossible to hide.

The only way to keep that ceiling looking good is to repair and respray the whole section, meaning that you can be forced to respray up to 400 m2 worst case.

Just imagine the cost for this. You will need to stop the commerce in the facility, remove all furniture and decorations, mask the entire floor and all connecting walls and erect scaffolds before you can even think of beginning to do the repair and respray.

Still preferring the soft core, hard shell systems, do you?

Watch the video on the front page of https://www.fellert.com or follow this YouTube link to discover how strong and durable a soft core, soft shell product can be.

Fellert at Cité de l´Ocean et du Surf

The Steven Holl designed Cité de iÓcean et du Surf is one of our Case studies that can be found both at the website https://www.fellert.com and in our Portfolio which is included in our architectural sample boxes.

This is an article from the U.S. magazine ARCHITECT.   Klick Here

Bloody Mary at Lounge bar Hilton London Metropole

Definitely a standard Bloody Mary but very well balanced.

7 Baldheads out of 10, but it could have gained some more points if better decorated and where is the orange?

Even Better – 20 years ahead of competition

15 – 20 years ago a couple of companies, individually from each other, invented the acoustically absorbent seamless ceiling. At that time it was quite an invention. An invisible absorber, hidden in what appeared to be a gypsum plastered ceiling.
The inventions were not perfect. When stained they were difficult to clean, they were fragile and when they got damaged they were difficult to repair. The large seamless surfaces had a tendency to crack and the cost for having such a ceiling installed was very high. Well, all new inventions have their infant diseases. Unfortunately these creative inventors failed to develop their products. The products you buy today are litterary the same products as you would have bought 20 years ago. All those infant diseases are still there. Funny considering the massive technical leap taken the last 20 years in almost every product segment, just look at the two cars below.

This is now about to change!

Fellert is now taking this segment into the 21:st century by introducing a completely new product line, free from all those infant diseases and with a technical performance worthy the 21:th century. What we call it?
– Even Better of course!
The circle is hereby closed. Fellert is now 20 years ahead of its competitors. Contact your local Fellert representative to get a demonstration today!

Eco Build London

Earlier this week we spent a day visiting the Eco Build Exhibition at Excel London.

It’s said to be quite a big exhibition with around 1300 exhibitors and 60 000 visitors.

For being the first morning, the first day it seemed to be quite crowded.

Our main target was to visit the RIBA stand to get an introduction to their CPD presentation system and to sign on to this program, but while at the exhibition we took a good walk around to see what was highlighted. It seems to us that it is more of a traditional building/construction fair rather than focusing on ecological products and building as we expected even if there were a few exhibitors showing a genuine ecological profile. This was a bit disappointing as we were hoping to get some influence from other companies how to highlight our ecological profile.

While strolling around we managed to take a few photos on things that amused us: