Villa Arrigo
A striking colonial style villa in the exclusive area of San Pawl Tat- Targa on the Maltese islands – has been active as a luxury wedding and events venue, hosting hundreds of events a year, since the early 1970s.
Introduction
In the grounds of the villa there is a large, elegant marquee structure with separate areas for seating, dining and dancing in which parties often continue through the night.
Sandwiched between the British Consulate on one side and the nearest neighbour only 36 meters from the venue on the other, it was essential for the management team at Villa Arigo to introduce a highly controlled noise strategy to ensure that it could continue trading without disturbing the neighbouring properties.
We were approached by design consultancy Pro Invest to work alongside the architect Edwin Mintoff to design and implement a complex series of structural and acoustic works to achieve the remodeling of the marquee.
Challenge
Running hundreds of events a year often late into the night with residents only 36m’s from the venue, Villa Arrigo needed to find a way to maintain their high volume whilst not disturbing the neighbours.
Solution
We developed and installed a custom steel portal soundproof structure with a mass audio ceiling, acoustic glass and an array of speaker options.
Results
Villa Arrigo is now able to run events in a beautiful structure with 105dB on the dancefloor without disturbing the neighbours.
Plan
This project brought together the full range of our experience from the decade in which we’ve been operating in the field of acoustics, incorporating a wide range of acoustic materials, our highly directional speaker system, extensive knowledge of planning and licensing restrictions in the UK (which are amongst the most developed and stringent in the world) and our engineering and acoustic expertise.
Within a construction window of a little more than a fortnight, we essentially rebuilt the entire marquee structure; incorporating a new steel portal frame, an isolated concrete roof, a mass audio ceiling, an acoustic glass function room within the structure – using the room-within-a-room principle – and a conventional PA system with a line array to run alongside our highly directional Zone Array system.
In wedding venues, we aim to generate 95dB LAeq (T 3 mins) on the dancefloor as a minimum in the majority of our installations (pretty loud) and our combined noise mitigation strategies ensure that the L90 at the monitoring location (one meter from the façade of the nearest noise sensitive dwelling) falls within acceptable parameters as defined in the Clubs and Pubs act.
At Villa Arrigo with the combination of structural interventions and the speaker systems we installed we generate 105dB on the dancefloor – twice the energy of 95dB – whilst falling well within acceptable limits at the monitoring location. For the layman that means that the venue is operating at the volume of a nightclub whilst neighbouring residents sleep undisturbed less than 40 meters away. An achievement we’re pretty proud of!