Acoustic Panel Ceilings: Origins

Acoustical panel ceilings (APCs) are a mainstay in contemporary architecture. As a flexible, modular system of cross-T frames and solid panels suspended from the structure above, the APC provides the enclosure above many of the spaces we inhabit everyday: schools, offices, hospitals, and retail stores. It is a humble system, functional yet inexpensive, and it is everywhere. If “the secret ambition of design is to become invisible” as Bruce Mau asserts, then the APC has achieved this hallowed place within design as an assembly that performs effortlessly while often receding into the background, ubiquitous and taken for granted. Its current status as a background material, however, belies its revolutionary beginnings. Although certainly not limited to this lineage, the contemporary APC was birthed as an in¬novative materialization of the aspirations, conflicts, and contradictions within Modernism, and is particularly indebted to the slab-style office buildings of the 1950s. To establish this context this paper will explore Modernism’s interests in standardization and industrialization of building components, clear-span universal space, and the integration of new technology through the following precedents: Mies van der Rohe’s clear-span pavilions, architectural magazines, product advertisements featuring renderings by Helmut Jacoby, and three 1950s high-rise office buildings. The confluence of these interests, explored in architectural practice, spurred more than a decade of focused development of the suspended ceiling in the 1950s, resulting in the Acoustical Fire Guard product that closely resembles the APC still installed broadly today. Although architectural history and theory has not often mentioned the APC specifically, we can trace broader disciplinary influences to their manifestation in the APC. My interest is not in arguing for a newer or better alternative ceiling system, but in placing the APC at the center of the story, synthesizing various theoretical, historical, and technical developments to return to its beginnings with fresh eyes.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.108.3

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ISBN
978-1-944214-26-5