Acoustic Solutions for Britain’s Best Shopping Centre

Pacy & Wheatley Acoustics were delighted to be involved in the development of Victoria Gate shopping centre in Leeds following our commission by SCS Building Solutions Ltd. In 2017, the Victoria Gate won 'Best Shopping Centre' award having only been opened the year before.

This stunning shopping centre is home to many high-end brands, such as Anthropologie, Cath Kidston, Joules and the White Company. It was originally built to extend onto the brand-new John Lewis store, to provide customers with a luxury shopping experience.

Whilst the high ceilings feature a stunning geometric-style roof, there were high levels of reverberation within the arcade and this was failing to provide shoppers with a comfortable level of ambiance. Victoria Gate needed a Class A solution to their acoustic problems and needed the right product to provide customers with a pleasant and relaxing shopping experience.

The solution was acoustic plaster: a specialist plaster designed to optimise the acoustics of interior spaces. It works especially well in environments with high levels of reverberation, such as shopping centres and theatres, as it absorbs excess sound to provide clearer speech and music.

Pacy & Wheatley, therefore, supplied Victoria Gate with specialised roof panels with relief cuts which followed the curves of the roof and individual shop doors. This was a large project which involved specialist design and knowledge. The south mall's dimple areas proved to be especially complex, but we were able to overcome these obstacles with the help of SCS Building Solutions Ltd and Sir Robert McAlpine (SRM), whom also worked on the project.

Thanks to the Pacy & Wheatley team, reverberation was reduced to a good level and we were able to supply Victoria Gate with an acoustically healthy environment. We are proud to say that the project was completed on-time and on-budget.

Mr Darren Friend, Chief Executive of SCS Building Solutions Ltd was very pleased with our services:

"A massive thank you needs to go out to you and all your team involved as it has not been an easy project with the delays incurred to our start and so many other trades working alongside us at the same time and they have managed to overcome any problems on-site and produced an excellent job at the end of it all"

We love receiving such great feedback: it demonstrates that we have the expertise and experience to get the job done to the highest standard possible.

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