Use of aluminum trim speeds installation of the extremely curved light coves.
In keeping with the water-based mission of the facility, the design team at Gould Evans Architects in New Orleans created a “river” that snakes its way through the facility’s ceiling. It did so by creating a separation between the center’s suspended drywall ceiling and its acoustical ceiling. Light coves around the perimeter of both ceilings function as the “river’s” banks.
Original construction plans called for the light coves to be built of drywall. However, Keith Yeager, acoustical contractor of Dixie Acoustical in Montgomery, Ala., believed this would be extremely time-consuming and difficult. “In terms of time, studs and drywall would take forever,” he says, “because of the need to frame it, hang it, tape it and sand it.”