Hunter Douglas Architectural’s HeartFelt® modular ceiling and wall system wins over the DFB

Hunter Douglas scored a win when its award-winning HeartFelt® felt ceiling system was installed in the new German Football Association (Deutscher Fußball-Bund – DFB) campus in Frankfurt am Main.

The architectural firm kadawittfeldarchitektur specified HeartFelt® in the DFB offices as a modular ceiling system and in the press room as a linear wall system, totalling 1200m2 as part of the 150 million euro campus project.

The largest investment project in the history of the DFB, includes a 15-hectare site in the Niederrad district of the city. The association’s main focus when constructing the new building was the consolidation of all departments (management, facilities, and training centres) in one location, as these were previously spread across Germany.

The result is a new building complex of more than 49,000m2, comprising offices, conference and training rooms, sports and training facilities, a gym, bistro and press conference room. It also includes a football hall, an athlete’s house, a multipurpose hall as well as three and a half natural grass pitches and other training areas.

Lars Junold, project manager at kadawittfeldarchitektur, turned to Hunter Douglas Architectural, with whom it has worked previously, for the ceiling furnishings and selected HeartFelt®.

The grey 7596 panels were specified first for the ceilings of the office areas and hallways of the academy, but after seeing the results it was quickly selected as a wall covering in the press room.

The office areas in the new DFB building complex are open plan, so while they are spacious and airy, it is important to get the acoustics right so that it is comfortable to be in.

Marco Moryson, Project Manager at Hunter Douglas Architectural Germany, explained why HeartFelt®, which has a sound absorption coefficient (αw) between 0.45 (module 100) and 0.7 (module 50), was a good choice.

“With HeartFelt® felt panels made of thermoformed PES nonwoven fibres, the acoustics in any room can be precisely influenced,” he said.

“Felt is a sound-absorbing material – a property that is crucial for good building acoustics. This sound-absorbing effect, combined with the design and distance of the panels from each other, as well as the height at which the ceiling system is suspended, determines how sound moves through the space.”

HeartFelt® also scores highly as a vertical wall covering in the press room, where acoustics are particularly important. Junold said: “In the press room, the topic of acoustics and speech intelligibility were of particular importance.

This meant it was essential to consider the wall surfaces as well. The HeartFelt® system allows panels to be installed not only horizontally on the ceiling, but also as vertical wall cladding. This vertical structure on the wall was particularly interesting for us as it resulted in a great spatial result.”

Hunter Douglas Architectural launched HeartFelt® in 2017 and since then, architects and designers across the world have chosen the award-winning system for their projects. Easy to install and budget-friendly, it is made from 100% recyclable material, including the aluminium carrier system. The HeartFelt® collection now includes linear ceiling and wall systems available in round and square profiles, a baffle acoustic ceiling system, the origami ceiling system based on folding technology, the multipanel ceiling system with new panel sizes and the PareauLux climate ceiling. The linear felt ceiling system is available in heights of 55, 64, 80 and 105mm and the panels can be up to 6m long. They are fixed using a special carrier system. The panels are available in five different grey tones, ranging between white and black, while the 55mm and 64mm high panels are also available in five brown tones. The carrier profiles of the modular ceiling system come in silver or black, as well as in 16 different widths of spacing, from 50mm to 200mm, each divided into 10mm increments. This flexibility enables architects and designers to create different ceiling patterns.