254 Front Street is an 8-floor mixed use residential and commercial building located in the historic South Street Seaport district of New York The site is overlooked to the north by both the Brooklyn Bridge and by the FDR Drive on and off ramps. As such, the noise climate in the immediate area is dominated almost entirely by high levels of traffic noise. The building features large windows and roof terraces and cooling is provided by through wall PTAC units.
The concern of the architect and owners was that the high levels of traffic noise incident on the site would require the installation of non-standard (and so prohibitively expensive) glazing configurations and would rule out the use of PTAC units for cooling, thus requiring a switch to a central A/C system with increased costs and loss of valuable floor space.
WSP’s Acoustics team was able to determine that the PTAC unit system could be retained without detriment to future occupants and that with a minor change in the glazing configuration and minor cost increase internal noise levels appropriate for a luxury residential development could be maintained.