Palo Alto Networks’ Singapore office occupies a full floor of Guoco Tower, with meeting rooms, phone booths and training spaces each governed by Green Mark acoustic requirements. Soundzipper was engaged for the acoustic design at tender stage, and returned after occupancy to resolve a sound transmission issue identified by staff.

Client Paperspace (Asia)	Location Guoco Tower, Singapore
Service Acoustic Consulting	Completed 2025
Certification BCA Green Mark 2021

2 Stages

Of engagement: acoustic design delivered at tender stage, followed by post-construction verification testing after occupancy.

HW2.3

HW2.3 — the Green Mark 2021 provision governing sound zoning and interior acoustic comfort, addressed in the design from tender stage.

1 Site Identified

A single post-occupancy site visit identified the cause of a reported sound transmission issue between adjacent meeting rooms.

The Situation

Paperspace Asia engaged Soundzipper to provide acoustic design for the fit-out of Palo Alto Networks’ Singapore office on Level 10 of Guoco Tower. The brief required compliance with Green Mark 2021, specifically the sound zoning and interior acoustic comfort provisions under section HW2.3. Soundzipper’s acoustic design report was developed at tender stage and refined across four revisions before the floor plan was finalised, covering meeting rooms, phone booths, training rooms, a boardroom, focus areas and lounge spaces across the full floor. Following construction and handover, occupants raised concerns about noise transmission between adjacent meeting rooms.

What We Found

Soundzipper returned to site to investigate the reported noise transmission. The investigation combined a review of the third-party post-construction test report against the original Green Mark design criteria with a qualitative assessment of the rooms where complaints had been raised, examining room-to-room transmission between meeting rooms, corridor-to-room transmission through door assemblies, and the workmanship of partition interfaces. The cause was narrowed to the door assemblies. The partition walls performed to specification. Gaps at the door threshold allowed sound to leak between spaces that were otherwise well isolated. This is a frequently overlooked failure point: a partition can meet its specified rating in isolation testing, yet a single unsealed gap at floor level compromises the acoustic separation of the room as a whole.

What We Designed

The Green Mark acoustic design specified internal noise levels and reverberation time targets for each room type across the floor, together with the sound zoning strategy required to separate high-activity areas such as the boardroom and training rooms from quieter focus and wellness spaces. Once the post-occupancy investigation identified the door threshold gaps as the cause, Soundzipper recommended door threshold plates at the affected meeting room entrances. The fix closed the sealing gap without requiring rework to the partition walls. Soundzipper issued the recommendation as a short design memo rather than a full redesign, in proportion to the scale of the problem identified. For Paperspace and Palo Alto Networks, the floor now performs as the original design intended, with a documented remediation process on record should similar issues arise.