The meeting rooms on the ground floor of the Palau de la Virreina in Barcelona, where the Institute of Culture of Barcelona has its headquarters, had significant acoustic deficiencies that made their use very difficult due to a high level of reverberation. Its stone finish is very conducive to the rebound of sound waves.

To mitigate this effect, we had some wall bumpers installed up to half the height containing rock wool and wood to act as absorbers. However, in one of the rooms we found that an excessive height meant that the wall’s wainscots were not effective enough. The solution was to break the vertical acoustic vector by means of a suspended panel that would also act as a lamp and illuminate the meeting space.

The lamp is a series of birch plywood layers with an acoustic absorber background. The play makes the sound break up and the reverberation drop.