Modernfold manufactures operable partitions, glass wall systems and accordion doors, and works through a network of licensed distributors who specify and install its products locally. For the Raleigh, North Carolina office of Troutman Pepper Locke, the project team worked with distributor Maxson and Associates, which introduced the Acousti-Clear® glass wall family to the client through its product showroom.
The project
Interior Architects designed the office around a single ambition: to treat the full length of the main floor — reception, conference space and cafeteria — as one continuous, flexible environment. That ambition set four requirements against each other. The floor needed daylight and openness along its length; it needed acoustic confidentiality for client conversations and meetings; it needed to open into a single expanse large enough to host events; and it needed to hold a consistent architectural language across all of those states. Any solution that resolved one at the expense of another would have failed the brief.
The products in use
The team specified two products from the same family: Acousti-Clear® Demountable for the fixed enclosures and Acousti-Clear® Automatic for the operable runs. Because both share the same extrusions and rail components, the fixed and movable portions of the floor read as one system rather than as two different partition products meeting at a joint — the point that resolved the architectural consistency requirement.
Acoustically, both the fixed and operable openings seal to 45 STC, so meetings requiring confidentiality can be held in any of the enclosed rooms rather than only in a designated few. On the demountable side, a ceiling spline and self-levelling feet at the base of the panels mean that relocating a wall involves moving fully fabricated, rated glass panels and the spline itself, without dismantling glass from frames — which keeps future reconfiguration of the floor a matter of days rather than a construction project. On the operable side, automatic bottom seals allow a single person to set up or retract the wall, and a pivot panel maintains circulation through the run when it is closed.
The result
The floor now works as a board room, a training room and an event space, changing between these states without altering the way the interior reads. The daylight and the sightlines that the glass provides are constant across all of them, and the acoustic separation is available wherever it is needed rather than fixed to a single room.
