Government
Place du Portage III
The government offices located at Place du Portage III were recently renovated and one aspect that was improved was the acoustic quality. State of the Art Acoustik designed the new office spaces to enhance acoustic privacy, speech security, and vibration isolation. SOTA also introduced a sound masking system to reduce mechanical noise and improve the interior acoustics.
West Memorial Building Rehabilitation
In 2021 the supreme court building was under construction, so the employees were relocated to the West Memorial Building which was not initially in good enough condition to house the supreme court. The West Memorial Building was in need of upgrades before hosting the high-profile cases. So SOTA provided acoustical design of this heritage building that would make it the temporary home of the supreme court.
Lester B. Pearson Rehabilitation
The Lester B. Pearson Building is currently home to the Canadian Global Affaires office, they along with Public Services and Procurement Canada decided to renovate and rehabilitate the office to improve environmental sustainability and the wellness of employees. SOTA is a part of this huge project in designing the Audio-Visual system and acoustical concepts for the 5 new towers.
Valour Building
The Promenade renovation includes 3 committee rooms as well as 62 MP offices, which all require a high speech privacy level. SOTA carefully chose wall, door and window types to ensure the privacy and security of these spaces. Our contributions are not limited to acoustics, we also designed and implemented the information technology infrastructure. We recently assisted in a ceiling replacement at the Valour building to ensure it still meets the high speech privacy standards.
East Block Rehabilitation
The East Block of the Canadian Parliament was renovated and now has offices as well as tours of the past offices of Sir John A. Macdonald, and George-Etienne Cartier. This renovation had to be done very carefully to preserve the heritage building while still ensuring structural security and also allowing for modern aspects. State of the Art Acoustik provided the acoustical requirements and aided in the feasibility study for this project.
West Block Rehabilitation
The West Block rehabilitation was an extensive project that ranged from ensuring speech privacy to building new mechanical and electrical systems, while still maintaining the heritage exterior. SOTA digitally modeled wall, door and window types to provide the high speech privacy level required of the prime minister’s place of work. Since the House of Commons is the client, the speech privacy requirements are exceptionally high, just like their standards, but SOTA went above and beyond to provide the perfect acoustical design.
The Senate of Canada Building
The government conference center was a project that began in 2015 to accommodate the parliamentary rehabilitation. The old train station was selected as the location for this new conference center as well as the senate. Due to the sensitive nature of topics discussed by senators there was need for high speech privacy and intelligibility for the senate chamber and in senator offices. SOTA designed the optimal architectural plan to ensure ideal acoustic performance to regulate speech and deter mechanical noise.
Edward Drake Building
This complex and unique project is located on the same campus as the CSIS headquarters. This project was designed by WZMH Architects. We acted as the client representative in reviewing, designing and approving measures in place to provide high levels of speech privacy and security as well as mechanical noise control for the project. We also provided extensive verification testing for the construction to ensure that the design measures for high security sound isolation were effective.
Export Development Headquarters
Located at the corner of Slater and O’Connor streets, 150 Slater Street is the largest new office development project in downtown Ottawa in 25 years. The 18-storey, 535,000 square foot LEED Gold building was developed by the Broccolini / Canderel partnership. Our firm received the mandate to design all of the acoustics for the base building, including the sound isolation design, the control of both interior and exterior mechanical noise control. The project was particularly challenging due to the presence of a very large data center requiring the control of noise for four 2-Megawatt emergency generators and transformer room, and the building’s multiple chillers and cooling towers. There was an adjacency to a hotel requiring clever design solutions.
International Development Research Centre
The IDRC is a Canadian corporation that works with developing countries and researchers to build more equitable, healthier and prosperous societies. The new office for this important business is located in downtown Ottawa, and has a Go Green certification from the Building Owners and Managers Association. SOTA designed the AV systems for the entirety of this 19 floor building, which includes everything from meeting rooms to the executive level boardroom suites.
