Kalamazoo College
Hickes Hall & Welles Student Center ¹
Kalamazoo, Michigan

Hickes Hall, constructed in 1970, and Welles Student Center, constructed in 1940, were fully renovated in 2008. Together, these two buildings function as a center for the campus community. Acoustical consulting services were provided to support the renovation design. Acoustical consultants worked with the project design team to address sound isolation, room acoustics, and HVAC noise control for counselling rooms, student healthcare center, dining, large banquette and meeting rooms, 4 story high main entrance lobby, and offices and conference rooms for student organizations and College staff. Several areas within the buildings required focussed attention to acoustics. Two of these areas were the dining halls with barrel vaulted ceilings and "The Bridge of Life" mural executed in the 1940's by painter Philip Evergood. It was important to freshen the look of these rooms while maintaining the vaulted ceilings, preserving the mural, and improving the room acoustics; which, due to a lack of sound absorbing surfaces and sound focussing caused by the vaulted ceilings, had been a deficiency of the rooms since their original construction. Two other areas where acoustics played a significant role in the design were the student counselling and health centers. In these areas, the issue was one of sound isolation. Sound isolation to achieve speech privacy for students in counselling and exam rooms and sound isolation to limit the intrusion of noise from the dining hall dish wash room located directly above.

¹ Work by Mr. Sevener (owner Soundscape Engineering LLC) while Senior Consultant at Acoustics By Design, Inc