TWA Hotel

Imagine being the acoustic consultants on the iconic Eero Saarinen-designed TWA Hotel at New York City’s JFK Airport, with active runways facing the 512-room hotel and the steady roar of jet engines. You think that would keep us up at night? Wrong!

After testing multiple curtain wall options, we landed on a glass curtain wall by Fabbrica — the second thickest in the world after the wall at the U.S. Embassy in London — that is seven panes and 4-½-inches thick. The glass Sound Transmission Class (STC) rating of 45 ensures the floor-to-ceiling, full-width windows reduce runway noise. This, along with specialty guestroom construction and attention to details such as acoustic treatment to the rooftop pool and the rooftop co-generation plant that powers the site, is believed to rank the TWA Hotel amongst the quietest in the world.

This project was extra special to us for another reason. Cerami was founded around the same time of the original TWA terminal – 1965.

Signature Solution: Laboratory testing of many multi-pane windows assured the signature ambiance our design partners were seeking to create. Sophisticated acoustic modeling and simulation was done in Cerami’s Immersive Studio to enable the design team to experience a guestroom during jet take-off.