Dali Museum
Classic Fine Finish on Walls of Atrium
The new Dali Museum in St Petersburg, Florida is organized around an ellipsoidal- shaped, curving glass- walled atrium. Yann Weymouth, the Senior Vice President and Director of Design for HOK Tampa explains, "a 58-foot-high, right-angled, Euclidean ‘treasure box’ with thick concrete walls protects the art”. This unfinished concrete box is disrupted by a flowing, organic, triangulated glass "Enigma" (also the name of a 1929 Dali painting) that opens the museum to the bay and sky while forming an atrium roof that draws in natural daylight.
The three story atrium space that serves as the social and circulation hub of the building is covered by a large ellipsoidal skylight, creating several acoustical challenges that the design team of HOK Architects and Siebein Associates, Inc addressed.
Even on the very crowded opening days and events of that week, the sound absorption worked marvelously. Bravo.
A seamless sound absorbent surface that met HOK’s design intent while offering exceptional performance.
These challenges included reducing sound focusing traveling around and upwards through the large space; reducing the levels of reverberant noise reflected in the room from the cafe, museum store and orientation/ticket spaces on the ground floor to the quieter, more contemplative galleries located on the third floor; as well as controlling the overall level of noise in the space when it is used for museum social functions.
The HOK design team’s aesthetic vision required a striking clean white finish on the walls. Gary Siebein, Senior Principal Consultant of Siebein Associates, Inc. of Gainesville, Florida specified BASWA Phon on the project. The product was able to reduce focused sound reflections, reduce overall reverberant noise levels and control the transmission of sounds from one level to another in the large open volume of the atrium maintaining manageable sound levels on busy days.
