Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Great rooms and common house spaces

[Dave and Diane (daveanddee]

Hi Sharon, and everyone in coho-land,
This is indisputably a fantastic idea if you have planned for the soft 
furniture and the plants and accounted for it in your budget. But if 
you haven't, then you have to try to make do afterwards, and figure out 
how to "soften" the spaces without softening your wallet. The felt 
walls I was looking at cost somewhere between $400 and $700 depending 
on the height. This would be enough to set off one table. Incidentally, 
I would not propose to use these in situations where amplification 
would be used or where voices would be raised above quiet 
conversation--those are "party" situations and we have a separate 
process to use the Great Room for that.
The felt walls I was talking about can be seen at:

http://www.designerseye.com/wall.htm

--Diane(:^]

MARKETING FACILITATOR
JP COHOUSING  617-522-2209
P.O. BOX 420 BOSTON MASSACHUSETTS
HTTP://WWW.JPCOHOUSING.ORG
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On Thu, 30 Mar 2006 14:41:10, Sharon Villines 
<sharon [at] sharonvillines.com> wrote:


> On Dec 17, 2005, at 4:25 PM, Dave and Diane wrote:
> > The size of our great room is good for community meetings but with one
> > large room community dinners can be painfully noisy. I think the 3 
> > contiguous
> > rooms/alcoves that can be used separately would work out better for 
> > this function.
>
> I think the beauty of a large room is dividing it artfully using large
> plants and soft furniture so there are human scale seating and dining
> areas that can be rearranged and removed all together if a large
> meeting space is desired.

> >  Has anyone tried those sound-absorbing felted wool
> > screens from greatnordicdesign.com?
>
> I don't know the wool screen you refer to but at the college where I
> used to teach and from experiences in hotels where they make small
> rooms out of large banquet halls, I would save your money. The panels
> I've experienced don't work as sound barriers if amplification is used
> or if voices are raised above quiet conversation.