Involve the users in the design process
One of the most modern sports and entertainment facilities in Poland was built in ul. Lubelska in Puławy. The concept of the hall was consulted with the sports community where they were invited to give comments and suggestions about functionality and practice. These suggestions influenced the final design prepared by architect Janusz Gąsiorowski from the local architectural studio Marka Pracownia Architektoniczna Janusz Gąsiorowski Tomasz Kozłowski.
The sports and entertainment hall in Puławy has been equipped with stands of 1,336 fixed seats, 76 seats in the VIP sector and telescopic stands with 1,726 foldable seats. In total, it can hold an audience reach over 3,200 seats. The hall's pride is a professional North American maple floor, known from the NBA, with an area of 2700 m2 (about the area of a large mansion) – the largest of its kind in Europe. The design of the hall meets the requirements of the international sports associations for matches on a European scale as well as it has adequate facilities for the production of television broadcasts and music concerts.
Perfect harmony of acoustic and aesthetic values
Several Rockfon products were combined to create outstanding acoustics of the hall in Puławy. All the solutions were selected to create the perfect harmony of acoustic and aesthetic values. The main hall was made by large sections of glass and concrete and that makes the sound soaring and difficult to control. The perfect solution was to install the monolithic and elegant ceiling from Rockfon Mono Acoustic and circle-shaped islands to complement the industrial design with Rockfon Eclipse islands. The whole fits perfectly with the lighting on the wheel projection installed in the ceiling. Rockfon VertiQ was used on the hall walls to absorb the excessive noise and create a seamless finish. In halls, conference rooms and offices, they opted for acoustic ceilings from the Rockfon Blanka series giving an ultra-matte, perfectly white surface and high light reflectance. In the main arena, apart from perfect acoustics, it’s important to have high impact resistance. These requirements were met by white Rockfon Samson tiles combined with VertiQ wall panels.
Support from a professional acoustician
Early in process of the design of the hall and the conceptual stage, a professional acoustician was involved to support the design and think acoustics into the design. One of his first tasks was to prepare guidelines for the shape of the hall. He performed several acoustic measurements to verify the compliance with the design assumptions, and after the construction work was done, the final test was carried out.
In the main hall used by both athletes and spectators, a very detailed acoustic tests were carried out by the PN-EN ISO 3382-2 standard.
At the pitch and the audience area, 86 measurement points are found and the results confirmed and positively fulfilled the goals about reverberation conditions and speech intelligibility specified in the project, which were set higher than required by the applicable standard PN-B-02151-04: 2015-06.
According to the norm, the reverberation time for sports arena with stands and the audience crown is T = 1.8 s, while the results averaged from 86 measuring points gave the result of T = 1.39 s. This is a significant achievement, especially for such a huge sports hall. Research has also shown that the reverberation time is very similar throughout the hall.
