Project Batteriet - Skjutsgossen
Less echo in Södermalm’s most energetic courtyard
In the heart of Södermalm is the state- of-the-art Skjutgossen 12 office building, known as Batteriet. It’s a creative hub with a colourful entrance, an exclusive conference area, gaming lounge, gym, and rooftop bar with a view across the whole of Söder- malm. The brick walls also hide a unique courtyard, restaurant, and bar. And with the Swedish police force as one of the prop- erty’s tenants, the acoustics of the building were crucial in its renovation.
We’ve worked with the property for several years with the aim of refining the entire building, inside and out. Although the building was constructed in the mid-60s, it has been re-built and extended on many occasions over the years, primar-ily during the 1990s. Consequently, the facades are hugely different from how they originally looked. Our aim has been to try to recreate something of the original character from the 1960s. In short, we’ve developed a concept for the property that we call Batteriet, ‘a creative hub charged with energy’,” as Peter Morander, architect at Studio Stockholm, explains. The courtyard was completely closed and accessible only to the property’s tenants. With Studio Stockholm’s new concept, the courtyard has been made more public, and the street en-vironment around the property has been elevated. In connec-tion with the new main entrance, a restaurant with outdoor seating and a bar have been created, facing both the street and the courtyard. As some tenants in the property have noise-sensitive businesses, sound absorbers were a must. The Swedish police force is one of the tenants, so we some-how needed to dampen the noise that an outdoor restaurant and bar in a courtyard can create,” explains Peter.
In consultation with Studio Stockholm’s own acoustician, Akustikmiljö and Anders Oscarsson at Flexplåt came up with the solution of covering one of the facades in the courtyard with cassettes of expanded metal lacquered in dark grey, with acoustic attenuation behind. “I’d call what we delivered a standardised special solution! The product, and by that I mean the expanded metal, is in itself standard, but then in each project you have to tailor the cassettes to each unique building and facade. Although we’ve worked with Akustikmiljö in previous projects, we’ve never done so for an outdoor environment, so it was very exciting,” says Anders Oscarsson at Flexplåt.
sing expanded metal for facades is an upward trend thanks to the many different options for both pattern and colour. It’s also a material that connects to the property’s 1960s character. The sound absorbers behind the expanded metal consist of Ak-ustikmiljö’s own EcoSUND material. This is a unique materi-al that is resistant to both UV radiation and precipitation and which, due to its construction, cannot get mouldy. EcoSUND also meets the criteria for BASTA, SundaHus, and Byggvarubed-ömningen certification. In other words, this is a resistant mate-rial in outdoor environments. And when asked if it’s common to install sound absorbers inte-grated into the facade in an outdoor environment, both Peter at Studio Stockholm and Anders at Flexplåt are in complete agreement:
sing expanded metal for facades is an upward trend thanks to the many different options for both pattern and colour. It’s also a material that connects to the property’s 1960s character. The sound absorbers behind the expanded metal consist of Ak-ustikmiljö’s own EcoSUND material. This is a unique materi-al that is resistant to both UV radiation and precipitation and which, due to its construction, cannot get mouldy. EcoSUND also meets the criteria for BASTA, SundaHus, and Byggvarubed-ömningen certification. In other words, this is a resistant mate-rial in outdoor environments. And when asked if it’s common to install sound absorbers inte-grated into the facade in an outdoor environment, both Peter at Studio Stockholm and Anders at Flexplåt are in complete agreement: “Although it’s quite unusual right now, it’s definitely a growing
market. This is probably because it’s challenging to create acoustics outdoors, and facades are therefore usually more decorative and aesthetically pleasing. But here there was an opportunity to create a decorative facade with an acoustic function in that it was a courtyard with four walls, giving completely different conditions,” explains Anders. “This is the first time that I’ve been involved in installing sound absorbers outdoors. Although I know similar solutions have been implemented on the underside of balconies, good acoustics are becoming increasingly important, so we’ll certainly see more sim-ilarly creative solutions going forwards,” concludes Peter.