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A friend forwarded this article to me about a half-hour ago. After reading the article a few times, my feelings are a little mixed. Yes, sound matters. Sound c
by Anechoic 11y ago
A friend forwarded this article to me about a half-hour ago. After reading the article a few times, my feelings are a little mixed.
Yes, sound matters. Sound can help to characterize an environment. But I read some of the quotes in the article ("We need reverberation", "The beauty of the high ceilings and big windows was amplified, and humanized, by the scratching of chairs and the clomp-clomp of boots on hardwood floors", "There can be privacy in a crowd" etc) and I hope that architects don't come away with the message "background noise is good, silence is bad" because that's not the case.
Look at the Grand Central terminal example - yes, the high ceilings and reverberant background helps to create an atmosphere of a "great metropolis." But it also hurts the intelligibility of conversations and the PA system. You're trading acoustic comfort for atmosphere. The non-native English speaker or hearing-impared patron is not going to appreciate the atmosphere when they miss their train because they couldn't understand the PA announcement that departure platform has changed.
Similarly, yes a room sounds very different when a window is open. Sometimes you need that background noise. I remember being in a bedroom that was so quiet I could hear the blood flowing through my ears. I had to open a window to let in the natural sound to I didn't go crazy. On the other hand, you may not want that sound of sirens coming in at 3am when you, or your newborn, is trying to get some sleep.
I guess my recommendation hasn't changed - hire an acoustician! :)
- jholman 11y agoHonestly, that library reading room sounds terrible. I should not have to hear chairs on the floor. And like you, I don't want the terminal to reverberate, I want it to be functional and welcoming. I'm not looking for the acoustic atmosphere of a place to reassure me that that place is high-status. I think that the author of TFA does have that need.
- JumpCrisscross 11y ago> because they couldn't understand the PA announcement that departure platform has changed Does Grand Central have a non-emergency public-address system? Cannot recall having ever heard it.
- tracker1 11y agoOn a similar note... some of us are noise def... I can't really make out anything but the loudest sound in an environment like that... most conversations I don't get anything if the person isn't facing me, and even then it's only if their lip movements are enough of a key to get what they're saying... I have an inhuman sense of smell, but less-than-average vision, and piss-poor aural perception. The harder part, is that rough surfaces that tend to mute the "loud" tend to collect a lot more dust and be harder to clean properly/regularly at scale, which is another concern for some spaces.
- samstave 11y agoI love how apropos your username is! But yet - that is the reason why we have sound engineering and Acousticians. Architects already know sound matters, this is just a puff piece by some who think they have discovered something that is already and actual trade. Regardless, the execution of the smarmy article's hover for sounds, click to compare, was quite well done.