Room acoustics was the central challenge of this 3,300 m² experience centre, where visitors dive into Starbucks identity. The Starbucks China Coffee Innovation Park in Kunshan, designed by M Moser Associates, takes visitors through four worlds: brand, source, processing, and lifestyle, all open to one another, built to feel like one continuous story rather than four separate rooms, with no walls to hold sound in place, so a guide’s voice in one zone could easily wander into the next, and the calm needed for a meeting room or the gym, treated with the same care as office acoustic solutions, could just as easily leak out into the visitor path. Our job was to keep every voice exactly where it belonged: clear enough to follow the story, contained enough to protect another space two metres away.
We worked hand in hand with M Moser Associates from the start, shaping the acoustic treatment around what each zone needed to do, with every panel, surface, and material chosen to look like it belonged there, so the acoustics of the space stayed invisible, felt rather than seen. In the public zones, that meant chasing clarity: making sure a story told in the source zone stayed crisp and easy to follow, even as visitors moved freely through the space. In the meeting rooms and gym, it meant the opposite instinct, holding sound in, so private conversations and workouts stayed private. In the immersive spaces, where lighting, scent, and sound work together, we carefully tuned the reverberation so the acoustics supported the story rather than blurring it.
Sound did exactly what it was meant to in this space, loud and clear where Starbucks wanted visitors listening, quiet and contained where privacy mattered. That balance became part of the bigger sensory story that helped the project earn LEED and China Green Building Three Star certification. For the people who used the space, the difference was easy to feel, even if it was hard to name: visitors moved from one zone to the next without losing the thread of the story, and staff stepping into a meeting room got an actual private conversation, despite sitting in the middle of an open, glass and timber building. It stood as proof that open-plan design does not have to trade away comfort or clarity, and that acoustic design plays a real role in shaping how people experience a space.
