Portfolio

Berkeley, CA

The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive is in an Art Deco-style building that used to house a printing plant within an urban neighborhood near UC Berkeley’s campus. The 83,000 SF building includes an art museum, film archives, theaters, a cafe and large gathering spaces. The cafe and gathering spaces double as study and work spaces, and also serve as an event space.

Acoustic treatments were designed to be highly effective and unobtrusive. Our team used a perforated drywall material placed high on walls and ceilings for acoustic baffling and to provide maximum sound control. Perforated wall materials, cushioned seating and acoustic roof decking were used in the Performance Forum to control sound bleed. Two very high quality film screening rooms utilize a perforated board design and exceed THX and AFI standards for theater acoustics. Our team designed a triple layer sound and vibration isolation system for the large screening room to ensure all exterior noise was blocked. This system features a floating box-in-box drywall system on resilient mounts, wrapped in stainless steel. The entire theater floats over the library and film study space. The smaller screening room has the same box-in-box isolation and perforated materials and acoustics equal to those in the larger room.

Jaffe Holden also specified very effective outdoor mechanical units to ensure air system noise was inaudible within the facility. These systems were less expensive than using enclosed mechanical rooms to house units.