4 ms·

Meeting aesthetic criteria may be non-negotiable, particularly in a hospitality context. So it is probably on top of those that acoustics needs to be addressed.

by theoh 8y ago

Meeting aesthetic criteria may be non-negotiable, particularly in a hospitality context. So it is probably on top of those that acoustics needs to be addressed. Acoustic ceiling tile is pretty horrible from an interior design perspective...

notafraudster 8y ago
Noise is arguably an aesthetic criteria, is it not?
- theoh 8y ago
  The comment I was replying to made a clear distinction between acoustic and aesthetic aspects. Music is aesthetic sound, so you have a point, but most architects consider acoustics as something functional like temperature or ventilation. It's really rare for a space to be conceptualized in terms of a particular desired acoustic, except for theatres and concert halls. I remembered something the architect Peter Zumthor said, which is quoted in this article: https://www.dwell.com/article/the-world-of-sound-2b3fbcf7 https://www.dwell.com/article/the-world-of-sound-2b3fbcf7
gowld 8y ago
surely they could be painted or decorated? the fashionable alternative is exposed ductwork, which is frankly silly.
- theoh 8y ago
  The way architects think, it's considered more convincing to use materials honestly than to dress them up or conceal them. So painting or otherwise decorating acoustic tiles is not an attractive option. The exposed ductwork thing is about not concealing (potentially messy) services. It's not just a fashion, it's a kind of moral imperative, that those services should be neat and orderly, not a chaotic mess concealed by a dropped ceiling...
  - iguy 8y ago
    Providing liveable acoustics isn't a lot less important than providing enough light. But few would argue that such honesty compels the architect to install 70s strip lighting.
  - jimjimjim 8y ago
    i really believe it is just a fashion. it is meant to trick (trick is not usually associated with moral etc) the visitor/customer/employee into thinking that the restaurant/store/company is being honest, organic and raw. give it 5 years and people will tire of it and go back to drop ceilings with proper lighting and proper ac. (and while i'm ranting, what it with those terrible weak led filament bulbs. god damn whatever it is they do, it isn't adding light).
    - fencepost 8y ago
      The LED filament bulbs are probably just dim because they've been dimmed. The filaments themselves are just strings of multiple LEDs in an optical coating and are actually a pretty efficient design. Those same dim lights are likely quite bright after closing during cleanup when the staff wants to be able to see better.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > The way architects think, it's considered more convincing to use materials honestly than to dress them up or conceal them That's not the way that architects think, it's a common current design fashion (and what we are discussing is interior design, not really architecture.) > So painting or otherwise decorating acoustic tiles is not an attractive option. It's absolutely an attractive option if naked elements don't support the ambience the occupant of the space wants. Which is why, despite the current popularity of the bare-services look, it is far from universal even in current (re)designs of spaces. > The exposed ductwork thing is about not concealing (potentially messy) services. Yes, and that design trend is fairly recent, especially in it's application to dining establishments. > It's not just a fashion, Yes, it is. > it's a kind of moral imperative, That's not as much of a difference as you seem to think: morality is in a very real sense just behavioral aesthetics; the broad outlines of morality may be fairly slow preferences to change, but you can find fairly slow to change elements in most domains of aesthetic. The attractiveness of the raw industrial look in interior design, however, is not among them, no matter how one might dress it up in language of morality.
ceejayoz 8y ago
> Acoustic ceiling tile is pretty horrible from an interior design perspective... The white hospital-style stuff, sure, but I've seen nice looking black ones and ones that look quite convincingly like tin ceilings.
- dogruck 8y ago
  I bet the looks-like-tin-ceiling acoustic tile costs more than the white hospital-style stuff.
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    Probably! (Probably not that much more, though.) But so do comfortable chairs, nice tablecloths, and good ingredients. (And the reclaimed wood and industrial fixtures everyone's using...)
- hendry 8y ago
  Be interested to see a link to black ones you mentioned.
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    Random selection off Google: https://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Genesis-Smooth-Pro-Black-2-x-2-ft.-Lay-in-Ceiling-Tile-Pack-of-12/10668993/product.html https://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Genesis-Smooth-Pro-Bla...
    - tgb 8y ago
      Are those just black tiles or are they black noise reduction tiles? I don't see any indication of the later. Is vinyl a common material for noise reduction?
      - ceejayoz 8y ago
        Googling "black acoustic tiles" finds plenty of options. Any drop ceiling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_ceiling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_ceiling) is going to dampen sound pretty significantly versus exposed metal/wood/concrete. You can also go pricier and get stuff specifically designed for sound studios, if you prefer (in quite a few colors): https://acousticalsolutions.com/product/alphasorb-quick-ship-acoustic-ceiling-cloud/ https://acousticalsolutions.com/product/alphasorb-quick-ship...
aurelian15 8y ago
When my previous university built a new eatery, the architects decided to put vertical acoustic "blade" tiles on the ceiling. Those actually fitted the architecture of the entire building quite nicely (see [1, 2] for photos), and the effect on the acoustics compared to the previous building (with a similarly high concrete ceiling) was enormous. It was suddenly possible to have long conversations with a relatively large group of people over lunch without growing tired after a few minutes. I figure that you could use similar, aesthetically pleasing (e.g., coloured) elements in a restaurant setting. [1] https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/bau/images/gebaeude-x-6.jpg https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/bau/images/gebaeude-x-6.jpg [2] https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/bau/images/mensa_1_gross.jpg https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/bau/images/mensa_1_gross.jpg
- lsc 8y ago
  +1; the open plan office in which I work has something like that (only less... symmetrical?) hanging from the ceiling. it helps, compared to other open spaces I've been in, and you can still see the ductwork, power and ethernet. They also have those compressed cotton acoustical panels on the wall behind a lattice of 2x4s, and some kind of grey insulating spray that covers the actual ceiling and I beams. I mean, it's still worse than a cube farm under a conventional acoustical tiled ceiling, but it is a hell of a lot better than nothing, and conforms to the visual standards of the day, (or at least i think it does; It was built out very recently.)
- Anechoic 8y ago
  Those are blades, and they exist within the cloud family. I also think they look attractive, but we've gotten a lot of pushback from architects when we've tried to recommend them, excuses have included interference with lighting and sprinkler systems (I'm not an architect so I don't know how valid those concerns really are) and cost. As with most anything, it's probably easier to incorporate them into a new design from the start then to fit them into an existing space that wasn't designed to accommodate them.

by theoh 8y ago

notafraudster 8y ago

Noise is arguably an aesthetic criteria, is it not?

theoh 8y ago
The comment I was replying to made a clear distinction between acoustic and aesthetic aspects. Music is aesthetic sound, so you have a point, but most architects consider acoustics as something functional like temperature or ventilation. It's really rare for a space to be conceptualized in terms of a particular desired acoustic, except for theatres and concert halls. I remembered something the architect Peter Zumthor said, which is quoted in this article: https://www.dwell.com/article/the-world-of-sound-2b3fbcf7 https://www.dwell.com/article/the-world-of-sound-2b3fbcf7

gowld 8y ago

surely they could be painted or decorated? the fashionable alternative is exposed ductwork, which is frankly silly.

theoh 8y ago
The way architects think, it's considered more convincing to use materials honestly than to dress them up or conceal them. So painting or otherwise decorating acoustic tiles is not an attractive option. The exposed ductwork thing is about not concealing (potentially messy) services. It's not just a fashion, it's a kind of moral imperative, that those services should be neat and orderly, not a chaotic mess concealed by a dropped ceiling...
- iguy 8y ago
  Providing liveable acoustics isn't a lot less important than providing enough light. But few would argue that such honesty compels the architect to install 70s strip lighting.
- jimjimjim 8y ago
  i really believe it is just a fashion. it is meant to trick (trick is not usually associated with moral etc) the visitor/customer/employee into thinking that the restaurant/store/company is being honest, organic and raw. give it 5 years and people will tire of it and go back to drop ceilings with proper lighting and proper ac. (and while i'm ranting, what it with those terrible weak led filament bulbs. god damn whatever it is they do, it isn't adding light).
  - fencepost 8y ago
    The LED filament bulbs are probably just dim because they've been dimmed. The filaments themselves are just strings of multiple LEDs in an optical coating and are actually a pretty efficient design. Those same dim lights are likely quite bright after closing during cleanup when the staff wants to be able to see better.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > The way architects think, it's considered more convincing to use materials honestly than to dress them up or conceal them That's not the way that architects think, it's a common current design fashion (and what we are discussing is interior design, not really architecture.) > So painting or otherwise decorating acoustic tiles is not an attractive option. It's absolutely an attractive option if naked elements don't support the ambience the occupant of the space wants. Which is why, despite the current popularity of the bare-services look, it is far from universal even in current (re)designs of spaces. > The exposed ductwork thing is about not concealing (potentially messy) services. Yes, and that design trend is fairly recent, especially in it's application to dining establishments. > It's not just a fashion, Yes, it is. > it's a kind of moral imperative, That's not as much of a difference as you seem to think: morality is in a very real sense just behavioral aesthetics; the broad outlines of morality may be fairly slow preferences to change, but you can find fairly slow to change elements in most domains of aesthetic. The attractiveness of the raw industrial look in interior design, however, is not among them, no matter how one might dress it up in language of morality.

ceejayoz 8y ago

> Acoustic ceiling tile is pretty horrible from an interior design perspective... The white hospital-style stuff, sure, but I've seen nice looking black ones and ones that look quite convincingly like tin ceilings.

dogruck 8y ago
I bet the looks-like-tin-ceiling acoustic tile costs more than the white hospital-style stuff.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  Probably! (Probably not that much more, though.) But so do comfortable chairs, nice tablecloths, and good ingredients. (And the reclaimed wood and industrial fixtures everyone's using...)
hendry 8y ago
Be interested to see a link to black ones you mentioned.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  Random selection off Google: https://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Genesis-Smooth-Pro-Black-2-x-2-ft.-Lay-in-Ceiling-Tile-Pack-of-12/10668993/product.html https://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Genesis-Smooth-Pro-Bla...
  - tgb 8y ago
    Are those just black tiles or are they black noise reduction tiles? I don't see any indication of the later. Is vinyl a common material for noise reduction?
    - ceejayoz 8y ago
      Googling "black acoustic tiles" finds plenty of options. Any drop ceiling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_ceiling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_ceiling) is going to dampen sound pretty significantly versus exposed metal/wood/concrete. You can also go pricier and get stuff specifically designed for sound studios, if you prefer (in quite a few colors): https://acousticalsolutions.com/product/alphasorb-quick-ship-acoustic-ceiling-cloud/ https://acousticalsolutions.com/product/alphasorb-quick-ship...

aurelian15 8y ago

When my previous university built a new eatery, the architects decided to put vertical acoustic "blade" tiles on the ceiling. Those actually fitted the architecture of the entire building quite nicely (see [1, 2] for photos), and the effect on the acoustics compared to the previous building (with a similarly high concrete ceiling) was enormous. It was suddenly possible to have long conversations with a relatively large group of people over lunch without growing tired after a few minutes. I figure that you could use similar, aesthetically pleasing (e.g., coloured) elements in a restaurant setting. [1] https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/bau/images/gebaeude-x-6.jpg https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/bau/images/gebaeude-x-6.jpg [2] https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/bau/images/mensa_1_gross.jpg https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/bau/images/mensa_1_gross.jpg

lsc 8y ago
+1; the open plan office in which I work has something like that (only less... symmetrical?) hanging from the ceiling. it helps, compared to other open spaces I've been in, and you can still see the ductwork, power and ethernet. They also have those compressed cotton acoustical panels on the wall behind a lattice of 2x4s, and some kind of grey insulating spray that covers the actual ceiling and I beams. I mean, it's still worse than a cube farm under a conventional acoustical tiled ceiling, but it is a hell of a lot better than nothing, and conforms to the visual standards of the day, (or at least i think it does; It was built out very recently.)
Anechoic 8y ago
Those are blades, and they exist within the cloud family. I also think they look attractive, but we've gotten a lot of pushback from architects when we've tried to recommend them, excuses have included interference with lighting and sprinkler systems (I'm not an architect so I don't know how valid those concerns really are) and cost. As with most anything, it's probably easier to incorporate them into a new design from the start then to fit them into an existing space that wasn't designed to accommodate them.