ICE Design has been appointed to provide acoustic engineering advice for the Coffs Harbour Government Services Precinct incorporating a new courthouse, police station and government offices. The project presented several key design challenges, including the site’s proximity to the Pacific Highway requiring special attention to the naturally ventilation building façade to control road traffic noise ingress into sensitive courtroom and interview spaces. The exposed slab and building structure in the courtrooms required an holistic design approach to the architecture, building services, room acoustics and sound system design to ensure that high levels of speech intelligibility and occupant comfort were still achievable in this critical space. Open plan office spaces with integral break out spaces and meeting rooms have required designs that achieve varying degrees of privacy whilst maintaining cross flow of air for natural ventilation purposes.
Remote witness rooms are being designed in accordance with new benchmark design standards established as part of the Australian Research Council funded Gateways to Justice project (described below).