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Enter the underground corridors of Penn Station New York and you may feel a sense of claustrophobia difficult to explain. Stroll through the hardwood floors at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC and a sense of calm could overwhelm you. Why? Each of these buildings has its own voice – the way the sound behaves in the structure.
Think of how the murmurs move in the circular dome of St. Paul's Cathedral in London and how the curved ceiling of the lower floor of Grand Central in New York can carry voices. Then there's a satisfying click of heels walking down a deserted hallway or the way your bathroom improves the sound of your singing. This "auditory architecture" can have a profound effect on how you live a building. (Find out how you can navigate in a room using only clicks)
"Sound architecture is about listening to buildings, hearing the sound in buildings and reacting to them," says Trevor Cox, acoustics engineer at the University of Salford, Manchester. Even though we mainly travel the world using our eyes, it seems that our ears are constantly capturing information from our environment that unconsciously alters our perception of a space.
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Although they emit no sound, you can hear an empty room. You can tell if the ceilings are low and where its walls are, but the sound is reflected on these surfaces. Think of the sound that echoes the click of a heel on a marble floor, as opposed to padding stuffed with someone walking on a thick carpet.
"You can enter a room blindfolded and probably hear if there is a carpet on the floor without stepping on it," says Barry Blesser, a former electrical engineer at the Mbadachusetts Institute of Technology, who coined the term sound architecture. "We can hear all kinds of things. We just do not pay attention.
We have probably all been in a building that sounds bad. Dirty offices where the noise resounds uncomfortably between the floor and the ceiling, old houses where the crackling and moaning of aging boards haunt, stations where public announcements resonate until they are indecipherable.
It is increasingly recognized that buildings must not only be functional and aesthetic, but also acoustically satisfying.
While it may be difficult to pin down the why, these places may seem instinctively uncomfortable.
Today, it is increasingly recognized that buildings must not only be designed to be functional and aesthetic, but also acoustically satisfying, leading some architects and engineers to rethink the shape and materials of spaces.
Scientific research suggests that it is wise to do so. It has been proven that noisy work and home environments annoy people and that noise is related to depression and anxiety. In addition, concentration problems in the workplace due to office noise and intermittent noise have significantly reduced human performance.
But the way the sound interacts with the physical structure of a building can also dramatically change our moods and emotions. For example, studies show that living in overcrowded housing can cause a feeling of helplessness. Rooms with higher ceilings encourage more abstract thinking as people feel freer in such airy spaces. Consider the emotional impact of a structure such as the Church of St. Sophia, the famous old cathedral and mosque of Istanbul, which now houses a museum. Built almost 1,500 years ago, its domed interior and marble floors and walls can turn human songs into ethereal sounds that seem to emanate from the depths of the ocean and create a feeling of "love". exaltation at the listener.
"His sonic aesthetic is able to bring forth the divine," explains Bissera Pentcheva, an expert in medieval art at Stanford University, who studies the spiritual aspects of medieval structures. "It takes human speech and sings beyond the register of human language."
Traditional architecture generally considers the sound voice of a building as in the construction of concert halls, where acoustic perfection is the key. The idea of going further and ensuring that the building itself acts as a kind of musical instrument enveloping people, capable of generating feelings of tranquility, exaltation, tension or even a state Trance is unusual. However, it is not unknown.
The way the sound interacts with the physical structure of a building can also dramatically change our moods and emotions.
When a person's voice strikes at a frequency of 110Hz in the "Oracle Room" of the 5,000-year-old Maltese Maltese underground temple, the Saflieni Hypogeum, it comes alive. It's as if more voices mingle, the sounds intensifying on all sides until you can actually feel it tingling through your skin. A neurological study examining the influence of the acoustic properties of ancient structures on brain function revealed that listening briefly to a 110Hz tone decreased activity in the brain language centers and shifted it to the emotional areas of the brain.
If the acoustics of the space set to amplify a single tone can affect us so deeply, what effect can a room that amplifies much can have on our consciousness? Shea Michael Trahan, an architect at Trapolin-Peer, uses cymatics – how surfaces vibrate – and three-dimensional printing technology to answer this question. He creates 3D structures that he hopes can be expanded to allow you to sing in B flat or B major to resonate the building, or to "sing" in return.
"What I'm trying to do is create spaces that isolate a single tone, much like the Matrimandir, a golden geodesic dome used as a meditation space, focusing a single ray of light," says Trahan. "Hyper-reverberation is actually the architect's gift to the observer as long as he uses their sound and extends it as much as possible to intensify or intensify the experience."
It is possible that this use has a meaning that goes beyond the creation of pleasant spaces. These interactive sound structures could function as immersive sonic therapy rooms for existing sonic therapies for PTSD, depression and Parkinson's disease. Singers could even use them to tune their voices to get accurate tones. (Discover how hospital noise can compromise patient safety)
"When space acts as an instrument, it can grant you," says Trahan.
Susan Magsamen, Executive Director of the International Laboratory for the Arts and Mind at Baltimore Johns Hopkins University, participates in a multidisciplinary project aimed at creating a whole new kind of healing space for children waking up from traumatic brain injuries. The "Sensory Care Room" of the Kennedy Krieger Hospital, whose construction is scheduled for the end of the year, will personalize the sounds, such as a mother's voice or a song, the favorite smells, temperature and lighting of each child, in a room that looks like a cocoon. , to help children wake up faster and better.
Michael Fowler, a member of the audio communication group of the Technical University of Berlin, approaches sound architecture differently. It is inspired by open spaces with unique sound features, such as Japanese gardens with dry stone cascades that tingle like real waterfalls, with intelligent positioning of water features out of sight. He studies what he calls "exemplary" sound spaces to determine what makes them unique, be it geometric shapes or the layout of materials in a room. He wants to use it to create an algorithm or calculation routine, a kind of digital auditory archetype, that architects can use to design buildings or other public spaces.
"By using this, you can produce this type of exemplary space, and they can exist on very different media, but their actual structure, the relationship between sound and space, will be common to all," says Fowler. "Although when you abstain, they may seem completely different."
Buildings, however, do not exist in isolation. They form cities and towns where it is impossible to escape the clatter of traffic, the booming construction, the deafening discos and the screams of sirens and alarms. According to Fowler, about 83 million people in Europe live in areas where sound pressure levels are above recommended levels.
New technologies and new types of materials could help. Increasing existing structures with vibrating facades, for example, could potentially suppress noise by exploiting the physics of interference. Produce a sound wave at the right frequency and the right wavelength, to counteract the sound waves of unwanted noise.
"In the future, it may be that if you lived near an airport, as soon as you approach a few meters near the building, the sound of the airport disappears because of the active deletion noise from the entire building, "says Fowler. .
But if it is not possible to get rid of the noise, why not kiss it? Make some noise from music, for example. In 2016, Jordan Lacey, a researcher at RMIT University in Melbourne, created a noise-processing facility that picked up traffic noise near a park via microphones, mixed it with musical sounds and played them back. via speakers located in the park. There were people living in nearby homes, wanting to sit on their balconies, instead of isolating themselves from the outside.
The MIX Concept House, designed by Karen Van Lengen, an architect at the University of Virginia and her colleagues, envisions concave windows that act as "sound dishes" that can be oriented in different directions to capture the sounds of the neighborhood. The owners can then mix these sounds through an audio system to create musical compositions in which a barking dog or a screaming child becomes an ambient soundtrack.
We have not evolved by listening to the buzz of air conditioners or the squealing of tires
But if it is one thing to invite in a new way the noises of our environment in our houses, is it possible to escape them completely? Architects responsible for designing future cities are now more aware of the need to create quiet, natural sounds in the soundscapes of cities. After all, we have not evolved by listening to the buzz of air conditioners and squealing tires. For Lacey, it is important to have sound architecture installations nestled in cities to create a network of "sound breaks," places where existing urban noise is transformed with the help of technologies and technologies. Landscaping to create unique soundscapes to enrich the lived experience of locals. .
"It's great to complain about the noise of the city and say it must be more like nature, but what about all people who do not have access?" Says Lacey. "We can design these sound environments to give people no experience of nature because it is not nature, but a kind of urban equivalent. Think about the size of some of these cities in 50 years. "
With virtual reality systems, architects are beginning to understand how the spaces they conceive could look like "auralizations" of structures using acoustic modeling software like Odeon. Such auralisations are used to prevent sound transfer between spaces and to make design decisions, such as the location of absorption, scattering, or reflection surfaces.
"Architects can hear the sound of their designs and, if necessary, adapt them to improve acoustic response," says Naomi Tansey, acoustics consultant for Arup Engineering. Going further, the auralisations allow the creation of unique spaces, such as the central auditorium of the concert hall Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, which sports a superb "skin" designed by an algorithm, composed of 10,000 gypsum fiber acoustic panels, which helps create a balanced reverb.
Mariana Lopez of York University is studying acoustic heritage using software. "The auralizations allow us to listen to spaces that no longer exist or have changed over the course of history," says Lopez. In addition to preserving the acoustic history, these auralisations are important during the restoration of historical structures because the materials used can affect the acoustics significantly.
However, it could be that our homes, offices and cities are becoming as pleasant in the ear as it has been for a while.
"Nothing in the language of bureaucracy or politics says we have to design for it," says Lacey. "We are designing minimum standards."
If we could start seeing sounds like Fowler's, which sees them as a clay-like material, a thing to shape, train and compose, it could open up some really exciting possibilities in the way we build our acoustic environments. "If you master the sounds, their connection to space and how to change their behavior," says Fowler, this could broaden our experience of the built environment around us.
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