The construction of the new medical /surgical pavilion, will transform the way personalized care is delivered, deploy new technologies and meet the needs of families throughout the region and beyond. By bringing innovative therapies from the laboratory to the patient bedside, the new building’s overall acoustics will help them embody cura personalis – care of the whole person.

Signature Solutions: Our team developed and provided acoustic design criteria, with the goal to bring a sense of calm to all areas of the PX – from the underground parking garage to the emergency department that can be directly accessed from a rooftop helipad.

Cerami also collaborated with the structural engineers to ensure specific vibration criteria are met throughout the building in sensitive equipment areas, including operating room, imaging suites and laboratories.

Construction Noise Monitoring 

Additionally, Cerami provided construction noise monitoring services for the MedStar site throughout all phases of construction. Located in a highly populated residential area, Cerami performed extensive monitoring to ensure noise disturbances to the surrounding community were kept at a minimum. Construction noise monitoring on site was particularly challenging due to the size of the site and its proximity to the surrounding community and residents’ townhouses.

Normally housed offsite, a concrete batch plant was brought to MedStar for increased efficiency, contributing to noise disturbances. To combat the disruption from the additional trucks, sifters, and debris, the Cerami team conducted extensive sound studies on off-site batch plants. Through our findings, we were able to create 3-D models to present to stakeholders demonstrating the impact and associated mitigation strategies.

Some of our noise mitigation strategies included the evaluation of equipment and the recommendation of less noisy alternatives, the implementation of physical noise barriers around the site perimeter, and when residents opted in, the direct installation of noise-reducing window treatments to surrounding homes.

The key to our noise monitoring approach at MedStar was communication. With transparent messaging, we worked with all project stakeholders. From client decision makers to the construction team members and affected community we ensured comprehensive mitigation strategies were in place, thus securing long-term project success. Through monitoring efforts at all stages of construction, the Cerami project team was able to avoid noise-induced scheduling delays, ensuring the project stayed on track and on budget.

Dynamic Brooklyn requires dynamic health care. The new 400,000-square-foot ‘Center for Community Health’ connects patients with every type of provider, all in one grand U-shaped hospital. It really is unique because of location- in the middle of Park Slope – hugging the neighborhood’s charming brownstones.

Cerami designed from the outside in – protecting both the community and the hospital from unnecessary noise; assuring temporary environmental vibration, as well as permanent sound reduction. Cerami provided acoustical analysis for the sensitive radiology spaces such as MRI rooms where vibration control is essential. Patient spaces and medical professional offices required extensive study to detail architectural solutions critical to maintain speech privacy between rooms. Cerami also provided services designing the sophisticated AV in training and conference spaces.

Signature Solution: The Center for Community Health includes 12 operating rooms, a cancer center with chemotherapy, an expanded orthopedic institute, rooms for endoscopy, bronchoscopy and pain management. Cerami was brought in to ensure that all structural systems that deal with vibrations were designed to mitigate fluctuations – even a slight variation in MIPS/ could cause disruptions and corresponding errors. To Cerami, being able to strategize for the most sensitive spaces is one of the most important things we do.

The new MSKCC David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care, a next generation facility focused on advances in outpatient cancer care, was designed for healing. The outpatient facility occupies 25 floors and offers 231 exam rooms, 110 infusion rooms, 37 procedure rooms, and 16 inpatient beds for those requiring a short stay. The architects set out to make this outpatient care and innovative research facility as open and filled with light as possible to bring the outside world in and enhance healing.  The cantilevered modules separated by terraces sounds wonderful in theory. Now here’s the acoustic reality.

The Koch Pavilion is right off the FDR Drive, in one of the most densely packed areas of Manhattan, and with a glass curtain wall being the only thing between traffic sounds and people healing, it was imperative that Cerami recommend the glass with the right attenuation, and that it would take multiple iterative acoustic simulations to get the result just right. Because Cerami has designed dozens of healthcare facilities and hospitals around the world, next to just about every type of problem, we know how to achieve the best possible acoustic environment.

Signature Solution: Noise and vibration are major concerns for all healthcare facilities. The constant buzz from equipment, machines, alarms, and bustling activity in the hallway can cause severe harm to a patient’s physiological health. Even a minuscule unaccounted and unplanned for vibration can become a major liability in the case of imaging equipment and precise experiments.

Cerami’s solution was to use our expertise and knowledge of the FGI Guidelines to weave the pieces of the puzzle together and create a design strategy that would guarantee that the structure, architecture and equipment create a healing environment that would stand the test of time.

Special attention was given to the space planning and design of the facility to contain noise emissions and minimize vibration produced by mechanical systems and sensitive equipment. Highly absorptive acoustical finishes, detailed design of partitions, and sound masking systems were incorporated to improve speech privacy and reduce noise transmissions between rooms and floors and sensitive areas.