Hunter Douglas has developed new aluminium ceiling panels that ensure good acoustics while simultaneously minimising the loss of heat in thermally activated concrete buildings. Standard ceiling panels prevent activated concrete from transferring warmth or cold to the room beneath. However, without panels at all, a room would have insufficient means of sound absorption. Hunter Douglas has resolved this with its BXD ceiling panels.

The new panels offer more open spacing, thanks to a joint of 30 millimetres. The loss of acoustic value this would normally yield has been compensated for by setting the panel height at 60 millimetres. The 30-millimetre wide panels thus have an average absorption value of αW = 0.50. This is just one of many possible applications. Combining BXD panels of varying widths (30, 80 and 130 mm) with a joint of 20 millimetres can even lead to an absorption value of αW = 0.85. The availability of the new panels in various lengths and widths means architects can literally add an extra dimension to ceilings.

Pieter van Rees, Marketing Manager at Hunter Douglas said: “I like to compare the panels to Lego blocks. We’ve basically developed a series of building blocks that can be creatively combined in many different ways. The range of possibilities is astonishing.”