Sound Advice
I sent a greeting card to a friend recently, it read...
“One minute you are young and cool, the next you’re turning down the car radio to see better.”
This is not as daft as it first sounds. Scientific research has explored why we turn down the car radio when we are lost and require clarity of thought. Essentially our brains are not as good at multitasking as we might imagine, and take time to toggle between sensory receptors. This is why unwanted sounds are so distracting, even disorientating.
If sound is so important to our understanding of the world, why is it so often a neglected part of building design? We have all stood on a busy station concourse and struggled to comprehend a public address announcement; we have all suffered break-in noise disrupting a meeting; we might have struggled to clearly hear a nearby conversation in a restaurant. Such events are almost certainly exacerbated by a lack of consideration of that space’s acoustic by its designer.
Throughout my career I have worked with BDP’s acousticians and other acoustic specialists across a broad range of sectors: everything from colleges, universities, workplaces, hospitals and railway stations. I have learnt that the role acoustics plays in the experience of a space should never be underestimated. A well-designed acoustic environment can improve the functionality of a space, enhance its users’ enjoyment of it, improve its character and contribute to its users’ wellbeing.
A poorly designed acoustic environment can limit the ability to learn, hamper performance of tasks, create stress, affect physical health and can even be disabling.
A few years ago, in a presentation to our Glasgow studio, sound and speech expert, and TedX-er extraordinaire, Julian Treasure recounted a research project that studied the acoustics of classrooms suited to teaching students with learning difficulties. Varying degrees of acoustic absorbent material were introduced into a test room to see if their learning could be improved. The study showed that as reverberation times were reduced learning did improve but, lo and behold, the learning ability of everyone in the room improved - not just those who were perceived to have had problems with their mental focus.
Employers should be just as engaged with this issue as teachers: studies that have looked at the loss of productivity due to “conversational distractions” in open plan workplaces revealed similar results. It was found that providing an appropriate acoustic environment in the office could significantly increase focus on tasks, reduce conversation distraction, reduce errors and reduce stress. What employer would not want that?
Another study that looked at memory and mental arithmetic tasks showed that accuracy reduced by as much as 67% when the subjects were played recordings of general office noise. A lack of accuracy might cost time, money or worse: imagine that task is dispensing drugs in a busy hospital pharmacy.
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A workspace with very low reverberation would be part of the solution, but low reverberation would not suit every purpose. A library yes, but a music concert would sound dead in such a space. A gym hall would lack the desired energetic character and even a railway concourse, whilst its public announcements need to be clear, might lack that enjoyable energy that inevitably results from its civic scale.?
When designing Glasgow Queen Street Station’s new concourse we worked with BDP Acoustics on the architectural acoustic design of the space and with Soundscape on the Public Address system design. We needed to create an acoustic character that ensured public announcements could be heard clearly above the hubbub of station life. Railway station concourses are large spaces that need to be durable and easy to clean and so inevitably incorporate many hard, acoustically reflective, surfaces. We had to introduce acoustic absorbent materials in ways that did not detract from the clean lines of the new concourse. To achieve this we perforated the ceiling cladding and backed it with an acoustically absorbent insulation. This ‘soaks up’ some of the sound that reaches it. We also introduced a small amount of perforated plasterboard to similar effect.
To ensure intelligibility of the public announcement system Soundscape created a virtual ‘time zero’ line - in line with the customer information screens. Speakers installed to the south of the screens point south; speakers to the north of the screens, on the platforms, point north. Computer software introduces a slight and increasing delay to the sound that leaves the speakers the further they are from ‘time zero’. This ensures that as sound travels up the platforms (taking around 0.5 seconds to travel from the first speaker to the north end of the train shed) it does not overlap with sound from the previous speaker, thereby avoiding the unbearable canny echo that leads to unintelligible announcements. Clever stuff. Soundscape’s 3-dimensional computer models go so far as to incorporate obstructions, such as lighting columns and the overhead line structures, that might cast acoustic ‘shadows’. The speakers themselves are nifty too, allowing sound to be digitally directed, with beam like precision, limiting the amount of sound that might bounce off other surfaces, confusing the listener.
My own hearing is not what it once was. I particularly struggle when there is background noise, such as in busy pubs and in the car. My pet peeve is restaurants that unwittingly prioritise their chosen aesthetic over their patrons’ desire to converse. My favourite Glasgow pizzeria is guilty of this: speaking to anyone not sat immediately opposite me in its tiled foodhall is, on a busy day, almost futile. In an aging population ensuring that spaces such as restaurants are designed for good speech intelligibility will be evermore important if business owners do not want to alienate an increasing proportion of their patrons.
It is not just the elderly, or those with hearing issues, that might suffer. Well-considered acoustic environments are essential to ensure buildings cater, as best they can, for a broad range of neurodiversity. Auditory sensitivity and overload can affect those with autism for example, making them particularly sensitive to sound. Building owners should be careful that, in creating the environments in which they provide their services, they meet their legal duties under the Equality Act 2010 to not unfairly discriminate patrons with characteristics protected by law (including age and disability).
The design of building acoustics, considering issues of ‘Access and Inclusion’, is not simple. In designing Glasgow Queen Street’s concourse we were focussed on limiting reflected sound and limiting the noise that broke in from the street. Then, in one of our Access and Inclusion consultations, a blind consultee suggested that some sound from the street, drifting in through the station’s open doors, would help orientate them in the concourse and help them navigate confidently towards their exit.
Next time you are in a space and feel stressed or are struggling to understand information being presented to you, question if the acoustic of the space could be better. Has that space’s designer considered acoustics just as they have the space’s function, its quality of light and its aesthetic? Or, have they unwittingly and unnecessarily created an environment that will discriminate against some of its users? Close your eyes for a moment (if it safe to do so) and consider what can you learn about the quality of the space from your ears alone.
Edward Dymock is an Architect Associate in BDP’s Glasgow Studio
arquitectural acoustics. Supplying High End Acoustic and Fire Safe products for over 20 years.
3 年My field of endeavour ??????
Connecting the Curiosity Dots for Product & Brand Vision, Design, Strategy & Sales Activation
3 年Discerning conversation while maintaining distance is no doubt impacting thinking on acoustics.
A great piece, and I fully concur about restaurants. They seem to confuse poor acoustics with ‘buzz’ and ‘atmosphere’ far too often.
Leeds Studio lead for BDP (Building Design Partnership Ltd)
3 年Such an interesting read Ed thanks for writing and sharing. From memory, in Southmead hospital, it was new fire regs and the reverb time to make clear the voice fire alarm instructions that dictated the acoustic absorption in the atria. As a result of quite detailed modelling, the environment is really calming and gentle on the senses even though there’s loads of natural light from the huge (hard and reflective) glazed roof. I’m sure it benefits patients to enter an uplifting but calming space. Everyone is carrying heightened stress when entering hospital, if it’s busy and noisy and dark and cluttered then the environment adds to, rather than reduces, patient/user stress. So rewarding when you visit a project post completion and you can see (and hear) it working ??
Helping improve lives and transform futures in by supporting our science, technology and the built environment clients to achieve their goals with better communications.
3 年Brilliant piece of work and article Ed! Thought it was just me who turned the radio down to see better! ??????????????