- Exploring Sound Qualities in Architectural Design
For the first assignment, I made recordings in two very different kinds of spaces within my dorm building. Each with its own acoustic qualities.
The dining hall
The first recording is from the dormitory’s dining area. As over a hundred students live here, the dining area is usually filled with people, and it can often get quite loud and noisy.
The room is quite large, but with a relatively low ceiling. It features concrete walls and pillars, as well as large glass window (on the side not visible in the image), but it’s quite lacking sound absorbing materials.
In the recording, you can hear the sound of people chatting, cutlery clinking, and water running in the kitchen, which is adjacent to the dining hall.
The sound can be described as boisterous, reverb-y and boomy.
The corridor
The corridor is a very long and narrow space, with concrete walls and ceiling, lined with doors on both side leading into the dorm rooms.
The room is very quiet. Appart from some distant sounds from elsewhere in building, the only sounds you can hear clearly is of me running and clapping.
Similarly to the dining hall, the sounds here can also be described as boomy and reverb-y. The sounds have a long reverberation time. I would also describe the sounds as rather muddy.
2. Exploring the Emotional Impact of Everyday sounds
On the tram
I made my first recording while I was on my way home on the tram.
I would say that the most emerging sounds are those produced by the tram itself. The sound that appear the loudest on the recording is the very low-frequency rumble of the tram moving forward on the tracks – a sound I actually didn’t pay much attention to while I was on the tram. There, I was more aware of the humming and buzzing sounds of the engine. I think the reason for this sound being more catchy is that it’s more in the mid- to high-frequency range, and also because it changes in loudness and frequency as the tram accelerates and slows down, while the low frequency sounds of the tram are more constant.
Another very prominent sound is the sound of people talking. A sound that is very catchy, as your brain quite automatically tries to catch what’s being said.
Another sound that can be heard is the sound of the windows rattling. A sound I find very annoying, as it’s quite loud and very irregular. You can also hear the doors opening and closing as the tram stops, as well as the speakers announcing the next destination.
Over all, the sounds inside the tram can be described as loud and very varied, with different noises varying in frequency and volume. Some predictable, and others irregular and random. The sound would probably bother me very much elsewhere, but on the tram, it’s so expected that it doesn’t really bother me at all – though it might be a bit tiring after a while.
At a café
I made my second recording while I was having a coffee with my friends at the Monocle shop & café. We went to the café at a rather busy time, and it was full of people.
The loudest and most emergent sound is the chatter of people talking. You can also hear the clinking of glass and cutlery, as well as the sound of work behind the counter.
Something I notice much more now that I listen back to the recording than when I was at the café is the background music. On the recording, it seems more prominent, while at the café, it blended very well into the background noises.
The constant sounds, chatter and music seem to merge into a whole, with no noise really breaking through from the background. The soundscape was quite pleasant over all, but a bit too loud, with sounds from all direction, making it a bit tiring and hard to focus on my friends conversation.
3. Empirical and Numerical Estimation of Room Acoustic Properties
