Hello forum!
I work in studio for Youth Department of Helsinki City. Last spring our studio moved to new place. We got plans for studio, designed by Janne Riionheimo from Akukon (the leading finnish acoustic design company). They were supposed to build it as well, but eventually we didn't get the money needed for the project. So after waiting for a while, we ended up to solution to cut the costs as much as possible without making huge compromises in acoustics. Practically this meant that we left one concrete wall standing, which was supposed to be removed - and we would built the studio ourselves. For some people this would totally suck, but we are pretty intrested in the construction process and acoustics. We're not construction workers, acoustic designers nor we have built floating rooms before, so we asked to get someone with experience for the project. I was asked to do a blog about our project in finnish, so I thought I might as well make summary of it in english.
Assuming the original design is copyrighted, I won't upload the original plans. But I made super informative picture with photoshop. This is what I think it will look like:
We already have studio B with vocal booth and "homemade" acoustic treatment. Now we're going to build studio A. In the back of the control room is small safe. In theory it could be used for guitar amps, and we will atleast make option for that. And in front of the control room is door to balcony. The studio is in third floor of the building, next to quite highly trafficked road. So one challenge is going to be the background noise levels. We measured 75dB in the balcony, 55dB in the control room, 50dB in the recording room. On top of that there's a ventilation channel from the recording room to nearby video studio. There's not much room for construction, so we have to build mostly one room at a time. For practical reasons we decided to start from the recording room.
Empty, untouched control room.
First day:
Recording room, parquetry removed.
Thanks to the strategically placed balcony, our trainees got saved from a lot of painful work hours.
The same truck took the garbage from old parquetry, small stairs etc to landfill.
Personally I think it's important to have boombox in construction yards. We didn't have one, so I had to use my photoshopping skills.
Fast forward to day five:
Layers of the floor. Once again I had a change to use my photoshopping skills. Alhough I didn't find the functions I wanted I think this picture ended up pretty informative. Actually the step sound board was pretty rigid and heavy. Would it be better than the average rockwool for building basstraps and other absorbers?
Starting the walls of the recording room. This is pretty much the situation where we are now.
and oh.. we also have small acoustically treated theater in the same floor. We can use it as recording room using aviom.
EDIT: Replaced missing pictures.