A peaceful atmosphere
The Art et Vie vacation residence in Plozévet, France, is the first of its kind with an indoor pool in the Brittany area. After an 18-month construction process, the 4-star bungalow residence opened in June 2014, and now welcomes visitors from March to November. Designed for people of all ages, the heated swimming pool primarily caters to families with children during the school holidays and to retirees outside these periods. Acoustics in swimming pools are notoriously difficult to handle, so project architect, Gérard Charles Gautier, faced a challenge in creating an environment that would offer a pleasant experience for both recreational swimmers and playing children. His solution was to equip the pool ceilings with ROCKFON Sonar acoustic stone wool tiles suspended from Chicago Metallic T24 Hook D850 ECR class D - grid system to achieve a high-quality, reliable structure that would resist corrosion in the humid environment.
A monolithic looking design
On top of managing acoustics, the smooth, white surface and concealed X-edges of the Sonar tiles also allows designers to create monolithic looking, yet still demountable, ceilings. The building owner, Vincent Berthy, has noticed that the visitors enjoy the atmosphere in the building. “Particularly on the interior aesthetics of the pool, the feedback has been that the visitors appreciate its light and airy design,” he says. “Even with the windows open, the atmosphere is very quiet.” Berthy is convinced that the acoustics in the building plays an important role. “The visitors give really good feedback on the pool because even when there are children, there is no resonance,” he says. “In other buildings, the guests would leave because of the noise when we had larger groups of children, but here that is not the case at all. We have no problems, and even with noisy children here, the other customers can still enjoy the pool.” The process also resulted in some valuable experiences to be used in future projects. “The approach to this pool should be generalised because this is the first time we have had a product of this quality,” Berthy concludes.
