Sant Pere de Ribes | 2025
Type of intervention: Acoustics
Surface: 130m²
Installation duration: 2 days
School acoustic projects in dining halls are increasingly important to improve students’ well-being and educational staff comfort. At Els Costerets School, located in Sant Pere de Ribes, the dining hall had a common problem in many schools: excessive noise and reverberation when many students shared the space.
At Efebé, we developed a school acoustic project to reduce noise, improve comfort, and transform the dining experience by installing acoustic panels tailored to the space.
The school dining hall was a highly used space where up to 100 students could eat at the same time per shift. This concentration generated an environment with high sound volume and reverberation.
The school dining room was a widely used space where up to 100 students could have lunch at the same time in each shift. This concentration of people generated an atmosphere with a lot of sound volume and reverberation.
The main problem was that the sound constantly bounced from one side of the room to the other, causing the noise level to increase progressively.
Among the difficulties encountered on a day-to-day basis were:
This excess noise had a direct impact on coexistence and well-being:
In fact, during the pandemic, the school even reorganized the meals of the preschool students so that they could have lunch in a quieter environment.
This acoustic project for public schools was born thanks to the initiative of the AFA of Els Costerets, which promoted the search for a solution to reduce noise in the dining room.
From the very beginning, the project was worked on together with the centre’s management team, led by the director Lucía.
One of the most remarkable aspects of the project is that many people were actively involved:
This joint work made it possible to analyse the real needs of the centre and design an intervention adapted to the space.
The AFA studied different options and companies specialized in acoustic panels for schools. Many of the proposals consisted of horizontal installations, but the solution proposed by Efebé fit particularly well both functionally and aesthetically.
According to the school, the final result has been very positive.
In any school acoustics project, it is essential to understand the problem well before proposing the intervention.
According to Adriana, architect and project manager expert in schools at Efebé, the first step is to analyse several key factors.
Among the aspects that are taken into account are:
From this analysis, a solution can be designed that really reduces reverberation and improves the acoustics of the school canteen.
At Efebé we adapt each project to respond to the specific needs of the center, combining:
The intervention consisted of the installation of white and blue acoustic panels designed to reduce reverberation and balance the acoustics of the space.
One of the differential aspects of the project was the decision to install the acoustic panels vertically instead of horizontally.
This decision was made for several reasons:
One of the important technical conditions was that the luminaires could not be modified. For this reason, special work was done:
The aim was for the panels to form part of the project without visually competing with other elements of the dining room.
The project also took into account the aesthetics of the space. The colors were worked on:
This dining room had a particularity that influenced the project: the main access is through the center of the longest side of the room, something unusual in school canteens.
This feature meant that the Efebé team had to rethink the distribution of the acoustic panels to guarantee:
The colours of the panels were distributed with people’s perspectives in mind when they enter the dining room.
In the area that works more as a corridor, it was decided:
In addition to the installation of the panels, the school also incorporated bare blinds in the windows.
These blinds help to:
These types of complementary decisions show that the acoustic improvement of a space is often the result of a global vision of the project.
After the intervention, the change in the school canteen has been very remarkable.
Depending on the center:
What used to be a space with complicated acoustics has become a much more comfortable dining room for students.
Many schools encounter similar problems in spaces such as:
When there are many people and surfaces that reflect sound, it is common for noise and reverberation problems to appear. For this reason, more and more schools are opting for acoustic projects for schools that improve comfort and well-being.
At Efebé we develop acoustic projects in schools adapted to each space, analysing the real use of the rooms and proposing solutions that combine functionality, design and architectural integration.
If you have noise problems in your school or want to improve the acoustics of the school canteen, we can help you find the best solution.
