BASF specialty foam decorates, insulates Spanish design hotel

The next time you’re in Barcelona, Spain, with a really big secret to confide, do it at the newly built Barcel Raval design hotel, where sound absorbers made from BASF’s Basotect will ensure that you get some privacy.

The lobby of the 10 storey, four star hotel has approximately 2,200 ceiling baffles that are made from BASF’s flexible melamine resin foam, designed to ensure not only good speech intelligibility, but also maximum echo absorption.

According to BASF, the low weight of Basotect, and the possibility to easily manufacture different shapes, gave the interior designer great freedom of design when it came to decorating the lobby.

The acoustic baffles of different sizes were produced by the Spanish foam manufacturer Tecno-Spuma, SL, Sant Adri De Bess, of Barcelona.

The low weight of Basotect meant that, by using simples techniques such as cable structures, it was possible to fit cylindrical sound absorbers to the ceiling that look like free-floating elements, and blend in aesthetically with the design of the lobby.

In addition, the ceiling elements reduce echoes caused by multiple reflection of sound on reverberant surfaces.

Now available in several grades, BASF’s Basotect foam has also recently been used to protect the sensitive satellites that the Ariane 5 launcher delivers into space. Since last year, it’s also been used in Beijing’s Olympic swimming stadium as acoustic damping in a new type of suspended structure, and it will soon be found in the planes by the American aircraft manufacturer Boeing.