Architect and Builder Magazine South Africa March/April 2015 | Page 63

warehouse) and re-use of some of the existing
gum pole flooring from when the building was
an electrical warehouse.
With the building being more of a “street”,
the building is able to make use of natural
ventilation in the majority of the space, with
mechanical ventilation in the exhibition,
meeting room and commercial areas. The
space also promotes an enhanced indoor
environmental quality – with plenty of natural
light, access to views, acoustic separation
between the various building uses, and the
use of low VOC paints. Other sustainable
initiatives include LED lighting, universal
access, water metering, recycling waste
storage & an efficient fit-out.
ACOUSTIC CONSULTANT’S COMMENT
Heinrich Wolff, James Pierre du Plessis
and Adam Clemens of Wolff Architects
called Mackenzie Hoy Consulting Acoustics
Engineers (aka “Machoy”) and asked for
acoustics and noise control input on a revamp
of the Blue Shed and Workshop 17 building at
the Waterfront, Cape Town. It had occurred
to the architects that the buildings housed
an overhead crane gantry, rated at some
tonnes. This implied that if the building
structure could take the side force of a gantry
crane, then the building could be fitted with
a mezzanine floor, suspended on cables. If
you then removed the walls at either end of
the building, you get a new building open
to pedestrian traffic, double volume, 100 m
long skylight, an astonishing massive hanging
floor, 150 traders stalls, 1,000m2 of exhibitions
space with windows overlooking a busy
working drydock where metal shot blasting of
ships is common.
The Watershed

In short, in terms of acoustics and noise
control, you get every single problem relating
to acoustics and noise which a building can
have: Double volumes are big and echo rich
with conversation stopping and market noise
enhancing properties. Skylights are great
for light, and let in outside noise; massive
hanging floors can resonate and resonate
until a few foot falls sound like the steps of an
approaching hippo and then, of course, there
is the outside noise of the Robinson drydock
where they remove paint from ships using
steel shot air-blasted onto the hull of the drydocked ship and which sounds just like steel
shot air-blasted..etc etc, only louder.
Machoy Senior Engineer (Acoustics), Rachel
Viljoen, was given the project and pr