Student Accommodation case study

Southwark Town Hall

Background

Camberwell Town Hall was built in 1934, taking over the role of headquarters of the Metropolitan Borough of Camberwell and continuing to be the local seat of government when the enlarged London Borough of Southwark was formed in 1965. It then became known as ‘Southwark Town Hall’. After the council moved to Tooley Street in March 2009, the building was sold to a developer.

Challenge

The retention of large areas of the building facade presented challenges for controlling the break-in of external noise. SRL assessed the existing building fabric to ensure that acceptable internal noise levels could be met in all areas. The location in a residential area also meant that operational noise break-out from the theatre had to be considered so that local residents were not adversely affected.

Solution

The former Southwark Town Hall was tastefully and sympathetically restored to provide high end student accommodation, artists studios and a new theatre for Theatre Peckham. SRL led the acoustic design of this complex and challenging scheme including supporting the design team with many bespoke acoustic details such as curtain walling elements and the acoustic design of existing structures.

The other challenge was from noise break-in to rooms from the roads outside as people left the venue. To address this, we looked at the acoustic design of the facades facing the roads and the ventilation strategy. A combination of double glazing with trickle ventilation and secondary glazing with mechanical ventilation was proposed frequency absorption properties. This avoided the need for specialist (and expensive) low frequency absorbers and enabled the money saved to be spent elsewhere on the project.