A refurbishment of a Liverpool Football Club private members lounge features Armstrong Ceilings.

Hexagonal canopies from Armstrong Ceilings were specified for a premier league football club’s refurbishment project for their acoustic and aesthetic qualities.

More than 60 of Armstrong Ceilings’ Optima mineral canopies were specified by strategic design consultants 20.20 for “The International” private members lounge at Liverpool Football Club, part of a refurbishment of the club’s corporate hospitality suites and associated public areas.

The Armstrong 1170mm x 1010mm white canopies, which are highly light-reflective at 87% and are manufactured with 82% recycled content, perform acoustically to Sound Absorption Class A. This high sound absorption performance helps to reduce reverberation time and background noise level.

Optima Canopies provide greater sound absorption than a continuous ceiling of the same visible surface area because the sound is absorbed from both the front and back surfaces. This means one canopy can absorb up to 88% more sound than the same visible surface area of a traditional wall-to-wall Optima ceiling.

At Anfield, some of the Optima Canopies feature lighting elements and are complemented by 136²m of 600mm x 600mm white fine fissured mineral tiles in the reception area. They were installed by W Braithwaite & Son during the closed football season.

The club’s brief to 20.20 was to provide an inspirational space for private members based on the theme of its international players.

Michael Sebti, project designer at 20.20: “We met the brief for ‘The International’ room by designing a bold creative environment. A major part of this was to have a striking ceiling treatment with the use of hexagonal tiles against a black slab behind.

“Other quality materials and design details helped us achieve this quality.
The rest of the space included graphic stories about Liverpool players’ international achievements over the years.

“We wanted to have an acoustic solution and a hexagonal decorative effect that suited the concept. The Armstrong system was simple and easy to install which suited not only our design criteria but the tight timescales of the project installation.”

Luke Braithwaite, himself a LFC supporter, said: “It was a very challenging project as there was £1.2million worth of work to complete within 7.5 weeks but the Armstrong products performed well.”