Basement HIL

The room serves as a delivery hall for ETH. The oversized space offers enough room for large trucks, allowing them to deliver their goods directly to the building.

The long and high corridor reacts strongly to noise. The parallel concrete walls and ceilings absorb almost nothing, resulting in every noise, no matter how quiet, beeing clearly audible even from a distance. The long corridor acts as an amplifier, which, when you are in it, seems to make the noises coming from the adjacent delivery hall almost as loud as your own.

Specific Accoustic Events:

1. deep buzzing sounds – probably coming from some technical installation related to the building
2. high pitched hissing – probably coming from multiple different noise sources, that combined, due to the high reverberation of the space, result in this unspecific soundscape.

Live – Echoey – Muddy – Reverb-y – Sizzly – Cavernous – Resonant – Noisy – Diffuse – Reflective

Roof Terrace HIL

Besides the centraly aligned building service rooms, the terrace primarily serves as a place for relaxation.

In contrast to the Hall this space only has very little reverberation. But eventhough it is an open space the wall, aswell as the railings, still reflect noise resulting in short and crisp flatter echo.

Specific Accoustic Events:

1. insistent rustling – coming from the building ventilation system
2. Birds chirping
3. Thump, Bang, Clanging – coming from the big construction crater
4. homogeneous sizzling noise – cars, wind etc.

Echoey – Open – Silent – Clear

Exploring the Emotional Impact of
Everyday Sounds

Everyday Situations:

In my Room

1. natural:
   • wind rustling trees
   • tree branches knocking on the window
   • rain drops rattling on the window
2. man-made:
   • humming motors of cars and motorcycles
   • conversations from outside (open window)
   • thumping, clanging, buzzing and more comming from multiple construction sites (even with closed windows)
   • clanking of doorhandles
   • thumping of closing doors

In front of Alumni HIL

1. natural:
   • birds chirping
   • wind rushing
2. man-made:
   • humming gas motors and/or whirring electrical motors of buses driving through
   • indistinct music
   • conversations
   • indistinct thumping, clanging, buzzing and more comming from construction sites
   • sharp clicking and dull thumping of people walking by

Emotional Impact:

Regarding the two spaces I choose, the specific sounds I could hear were quite similar. Especially interesting was, that there were only a few natural sounds I could perceive in both situations. Most of the soundscape primarily consisted of man-made noise. The difference between the two spaces though was the overall intensity and volume of the sounds.

In my room, the overall soundscape is pretty low in volume. This in turn causes every louder and/or distinct sound to stand out and catch one’s attention. Hence, thumping doors and clanking doorhandles easily disrupt the calm soundscape and one’s emotional state. Almost no noise is overhead, to the point that I even confuse the sound of tree branches knocking on my window, with the sound of my apartment door opening and/or closing. Sometimes I even interpret it as incoming rainfall.

The soundscape in front of Alumni on the other hand, in general, is much more intensive and louder in volume, causing a lot of quiet sounds to disappear. The most emergent sounds are conversations people are having around you and the clicking and thumping of people walking by. The sounds that caught my attention were the buses driving through, as the humming and whirring alerted me to a subconscious feeling of hurry. When most of the people left for their respective lectures, I could suddenly hear the noise of wind and birds, as well as the indistinct thumping, clanging and buzzing coming from the construction site and music playing from one of the coffee vendor vans.

Empirical and numerical estimation of
room acoustic properties

For this excersise I went back to the HIL Basement. Here you can listen to the claps I recorded in the space.

A 30db decrease of the volume of the clap takes roughly about 2,3 Seconds. Hence, T-60 has a reverberation time of approximately 4,6s.

Using the Sarooma WebTool I get Values of 4,2s at 500Hz and 4,1s at 1000Hz. The measurements of the space and the amount of absorbing surfaces are estimated.

Characterization of room acoustic treatments

Basement HIL

This room practically doesnt have any absorbing elements. It is a huge hall completle constructed out of concrete. The only things that probably absorb a little bit of energy is little piles of cardboard gathered in a corner.

Since the spaces purpose includes a lot of traffic installing further furniture is contraproductive. Nevertheless it could be interesting to introduce acoustical structures, that could acoustically unhinge the two adjacing parts, by redirecting noise to where it comes from, without restricting the usage of the space.

Roof Terrace HIL

This space only offers one absorbing element. Neveretheless its the strongest of them all. The sky. It absorbs all sound, in every frequency.

The special thing about the space is the long parralel korridor created by the railing and the service rooms. Imagining a horizonzical plane – the sound that leaves towards the ground reflects once on each surface on the sides, as well as on the front and back, resulting in distinct echoes.

09 Guest Lecture – Landscape acoustics

Next to the big hallway and truck delivery infrastructure, the HIL basement also houses recycling containers for different disposable materials. The sonic objects I choose were two glass bottles. Since glass was stored in an open container, it produced a lot of noise when moved, especially in this space.

When hit against each other, they produce a sharp and distinct ”ting-ing” noise with a slight decay. Depending on the amount of liquid inside the bottles, the sound can vary in pitch height and decay time.

empty

half

full

all together