Inside the creation of Lanes™

When creating acoustic solutions, our team have a strong focus on sustainability, allowing this to guide the decisions we make. This impacts every stage of the complex product development process. From careful material selection and shape variation in a range to installation methods, sustainability is always on our minds. When you look at a refined product like Lanes, it is easy to overlook the process involved in its creation.  To get the result we see today, it took the effort of a large team of designers. To gain a better understanding of what this involved, we talked to senior designer, Sean Stirling, who played an important role in making Lanes what it is today. Here is what he had to say:

What was the initial idea that led to Lanes?

Lanes is a great example of our team pairing our sustainable values with a constant push for new innovation. Sustainability, along with performance, was a huge consideration throughout the creation of Lanes. At Autex Acoustics, sustainability has been a part of our core values for decades and impacts every part of our business. As designers, we have to recognise that not everything is permanent in the commercial space, so our solutions need to be able to be removed with as little impact on the environment as possible. We were constantly thinking about the end of the life of the product. The more glue and permanent fixings we could remove, the better. This thinking resulted in the innovation of a unique clipping system with no glue in the installation process, meaning that Lanes is designed for disassembly.

What challenges did you face when designing Lanes?

The hardest part is transitioning an idea into a functional product. There were around five to six variations of Lanes before we had settled on the best solution. This required refining the look and method of creation to ensure it continued to meet our objective, a sustainably focused, easy-to-install acoustic solution. We went through a lot of testing and trial and error to get to where we are now. Having our concepts properly tested with clients and installers allowed our team to gain valuable insight into any changes we needed to make. This market feedback was crucial to Lanes being a success.

How did we account for high acoustic performance/NRC?

We decided to utilize air gap technology to ensure this solution could provide superior acoustic performance. We worked with our acoustic testing partners and fire compliance to come up with the best compromise. While we had a great idea on paper, we needed to make sure that our final product was high quality and easy to use in projects.