Exposed CLT and carefully concealed services for new Fisher & Paykel HQ

The new Fisher & Paykel Appliances Global Headquarters, designed by RTA, features 10,000m2 of mass timber including glulam, LVL and CLT over three floors. With exposed timber ceilings came the challenge of incorporating services between floors — a challenge that SoundDown™ met with the development of the Legato Acoustic Flooring System.

The SoundDown™ Legato system features pre-assembled, castellated air battens (PAB) which are loose-laid over the flooring substructure to create a service cavity of 42 - 140mm in height depending on project requirements. The system allows services to run both parallel and perpendicular to the batten at any point, without needing to notch out the batten, providing greater flexibility in design and install. Once services have been installed, the cavities are filled with an insulation layer of Mammoth Acoustic Blanket 735, and topped with a fixing layer of Magnedure 19mm MgO board. This results in an acoustic flooring system that achieves tested performance up to STC 66dB and IIC 60dB.

The Build Anatomy team provided support throughout the project to ensure the system would handle any design challenges — which included the sheer size of the project at just over 6000m2, the curved floor plan of the building, and meeting fire requirements. We also assisted with custom battens for the building’s gym which had a higher weight load requirement. To ensure the floor could withstand heavy weights being dropped, they developed and tested a custom 4.7 kilonewton point load batten specifically for that space.

The SoundDown™ Legato system was straightforward to install, with a mock-up run helping all parties understand the system and how it would fit in with other elements of the build. “For the services, everything has to work in the module that they’re given with the batten system,” says Murray. “We had a mock-up run-through of the first zone. All services had a chance to work with it, see what it was capable of, and from there it's been a good process. It’s a very practical product.”

SoundDown™ Legato Acoustic Flooring System