The Technion Project: Part One
Inside the Technion is a beautiful geometric structure that has just opened its doors. Join us for a short tour inside and maybe you’ll pick up a few ideas along the way.
The entrance hall
The entrance hall of the “Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering” building is bright and welcoming to the hundreds of students who pass through its corridors every day. Generous glass windows stretch from floor to ceiling, flooding the space with natural light that reflects off the white ceiling.
This “Armourcoat” ceiling is an acoustic plaster ceiling with powerful sound absorption, chosen for its ability to significantly reduce reverberation and allow for a pleasant atmosphere in this space full of voices and sounds. The ceiling fits in perfectly with the color palette defined by the designers, which began with the cladding of the exterior walls and continued into the building. The white color of the ceiling blends in with the black hardware and the veneer cladding that frames the elevators.
The application of this ceiling provides a uniform appearance without “seams” that maintains a uniform appearance across its width and length. This uniformity allows the objects hanging from it to stand out and attract the eye. This is exactly what the designers did when they chose rounded, large, and eye-catching lighting fixtures that hang from the ceiling at regular intervals.
Building Floors
If we continue up the building, we will discover seven levels designed in a repeating structure on each floor. On each floor we can find student rooms with shared learning areas, laboratories, small offices and a long, continuous corridor connecting them all.
Walking down the corridor, we can encounter the spectrum of colors that characterize the project. Light wood surfaces cover the floor and the niches carved into the walls, black planters are scattered on the sides of the space and white rounded light fixtures hang from the slatted ceiling.
Beyond complementing the gray color in the color palette, the slatted ceiling plays a vital role. They give a unique design look that integrates with the space. At first glance, they hide the systems running through the ceiling, but a closer look reveals a more industrial look when the air conditioning, fire extinguishing, etc. systems are revealed. The slats are hung on a perimeter profile and sit like tiles that can be completely dismantled if necessary, which greatly facilitates on-site maintenance work.
Finally, when we reach the student room we will notice another and final acoustic ceiling for this project. The “Soprano 40B” ceiling with white tiles measuring 120*60 cm that are glued directly to the concrete ceiling and give a full look without the need for profiles. The ceiling sits in harmony with the veneer cladding, the black lintels and the seating systems that converge around the exposed concrete columns.
The Soprano ceiling has an extremely high acoustic attenuation (N.R.C 0.95) that helps reduce reverberation above the learning areas, which are also used by the students as a place for active and lively social gatherings.
