Six weeks is a long time when a fitout is waiting on one component. Everything else on the project was either done or ready to proceed — the framing, the flooring, the ceiling works. We were sitting on a finished shell, waiting for doors. And our glass supplier, who we had used without issue on…

When we decided to treat the acoustics in our nursery, we did not expect the material decision to be the complicated part. We expected to choose a supplier, agree on a layout, and get on with it. Instead we spent three weeks going back and forth on one question: wood wool panels or wooden acoustic…

Our office is on the 31st floor of a tower in Business Bay. The views are good. The noise, until recently, was not. It is easy to assume that being high up means being quiet. In practice, a glass curtain-wall facade at that height picks up wind noise, mechanical plant from neighboring buildings, and the…

When you run a daycare, every decision about the physical space runs through the same filter: is it safe for children? Paint finishes, floor materials, furniture edges, cleaning products — all of it gets evaluated differently than it would in an adult environment. Acoustic treatment is no different, and it took us longer than it…

We spent three years treating acoustic foam like a solved problem. It was on the walls, it looked like acoustic treatment, and we told ourselves it was doing the job. It was not doing the job. We just had nothing to compare it against until we did. We run a production studio in Abu Dhabi…

A media room is not just a room with a large screen. Done properly, it is an acoustic environment — one where every material choice affects how sound behaves. We learned that slowly, over about six months of research, before a single panel was ordered. The brief was a dedicated media room in a private…

When we started planning the acoustic treatment for our gym in Al Quoz, the first suggestion from almost everyone was foam panels. They are the default answer. They show up first in every search, they come in every colour, and they are easy to find from a dozen suppliers across Dubai. We nearly went with…