A room built to float on its own floor, isolated from the building around it. This was the project that started Soundzipper’s work in therapeutic and sensory spaces.

Client Maxtra Sdn. Bhd.	Location Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei
Service Acoustic Design, Build & Testing	Completed 2020
Scope Soundproof Room, Sensory Room & Sound Treated Room

3

Distinct rooms designed and built, each with a different acoustic purpose within the same centre

93

Resilient isolation clips installed across the walls and ceiling of the Sensory Room to fully decouple it from the building structure

STC 40

Acoustic door rating specified for the Sensory Room, built with a triple calcium silicate panel core

The Situation

Maxtra Sdn. Bhd. engaged Soundzipper to design and build three acoustically treated rooms for a Child Development Centre in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei: a soundproof room, a sensory room, and a sound treated room, each with its own purpose and its own acoustic requirements. A sensory room in particular depends on close acoustic control, since the children using it are often more sensitive to noise, vibration, and reverberation than a typical user of the space. Soundzipper’s scope covered acoustic design, drawings, material supply, and on-site testing across all three rooms, with consultants travelling to Brunei directly for the work.

What We Found

Each room needed a different level of acoustic intervention. The Soundproof Room, at 6.1 by 5.07 metres, required noise criteria testing against the ASA S12.2 standard to establish and confirm its acoustic isolation from the surrounding building. The Sensory Room, at 4.23 by 5.425 metres, needed something more fundamental than added surface treatment. To achieve genuine isolation from structure-borne noise and vibration, the room needed to be built as a floating structure, mechanically decoupled from the floor, walls, and ceiling of the building around it. Any direct structural connection between the room and the building would allow vibration and impact noise to bypass surface treatments entirely, which meant the construction method itself had to change, not just the materials on top of it.

What We Designed

The Sensory Room was built as a genuine room within a room. A floating screed floor was installed on Sylomer SR18 isolator strips, a resilient polyurethane material designed to carry the floor’s static and operating load while mechanically isolating it from the structural slab beneath. The walls and ceiling were decoupled from the building structure using 93 RSIC resilient isolation clips, fitted at regular intervals to break the direct structural path that would otherwise carry vibration straight through. Sylomer EP500 runner supports isolated the base of the new partition walls from the floor beneath them. The room was sealed with an STC 40 acoustic door, built with a triple calcium silicate panel core, double perimeter seals, and a concealed automated drop seal at the threshold. The ceiling was finished with perforated acoustic gypsum panels to manage reverberation inside the completed room. The Soundproof Room and Sound Treated Room were each designed and treated to their own specification, tested on-site to confirm performance once complete. This early project set the template Soundzipper would carry into later sensory and therapeutic space work: treat the room as its own isolated structure, not just a set of surfaces to be lined.