MY ROOM

My dorm it’s about 3 by 6 meters big and it’s mainly made out of concrete: exposed concrete ceiling, concrete floor, painted white walls. It’s in the third floor. There is a big window on the opposite wall of the entrance and I have rooms on each side of the walls. Soft elements are few: the bed with its duvet, some clothes and a drying rack.

The main purpose of the space is to sleep and study, so it should ideally be quiet, discreet and calm.

What stands out is not how the room responds to my own sounds but how unevenly it is isolated. Through the window I hear traffic: the swoosh of passing cars, the low whirring and rumble of the tram and bus, dogs barking and people talking. Through the door I hear footsteps, voices, doors thumping and banging shut, and the whirring, hissing hand dryer from the bathroom. Incredibly, I have never heard anything through the side walls shared with the neighbouring rooms. The room is therefore quiet from the neighbours and noisy from the façade and the corridor.

With concrete ceiling and floor and hard painted walls, the room is live rather than dead, but the small volume and the soft bed keep the reverberation short, so it feels boxy rather than cavernous. Hard, flat surfaces make the sound crisp and slightly harsh at high frequencies (a clap or a voice sounds a bit tinny).

The most noticeable or overheard sounds are the impulsive ones: door bangs, dogs barking and voices in the corridor. The most likely to be overheard are the intermittent corridor voices and the continuous low rumble of traffic. The hand dryer is the clearest example of a sound that is both continuous and high-pitched (hissing).

The room feels calm and private, which is helped by the silent side walls. Sudden, loud sounds (door bangs, barking) alert me and can break concentration; the constant low traffic noise is dull and easy to ignore, while high-pitched, unpredictable sounds are the ones that cause discomfort. Context matters: the same voices that are harmless during the day are disturbing when I am trying to sleep.

Surfaces and spatial pattern

The concrete ceiling and floor and the glass of the window are the most reflective surfaces and give the room its crisp, slightly harsh character. The bed, duvet and clothes are the only absorbers. On the sketch, the louder and higher-pitched sounds cluster around the window and the door, which are the weak points of the envelope. This matches how the room feels: the ends are exposed to outside noise, while the middle and the side walls feel protected.

THE BATHROOM

The bathroom is about 8 by 2.5 meters big. It’s made of concrete floors and ceiling (exposed pipes under the ceiling), tiled walls, white laminate partitions between the cabins, a mirror and a sink. It is a long, narrow room with extended parallel walls.

The main purpose of this room is for people to do their necessities and to wash themselves. People use it to wash and to take care of their necessities. It is a shared, transitional space where privacy matters.

Here the room’s response to sound is the main feature. Compared with my dorm, the bathroom is much more live and reverb-y: sounds linger, and my own voice seems louder and fuller. Every small noise feels magnified: gurgling and splashing water, rattling and clanging cubicle doors, footsteps, and the whirring, hissing hand dryer. From inside I hear only a little of what is happening outside, much less than in the dorm.

The hard tiles, concrete and laminate are strongly reflective and there is almost no absorption, so the room is echoey and reverb-y, and sterile and harsh rather than warm. High frequencies dominate, so the sound is tinny and sizzly (the hand dryer especially), while the long narrow geometry adds a dense pattern of reflections and possible flutter echo. The cubicle partitions break the space up a little, which may give some diffusion.

Listening to my recordings, the bathroom is clearly more reverberant than the dorm: voices and claps last longer and sound brighter.

Impulsive sounds (bangs, clangs, pops of the cubicle locks) and the loud, continuous hand dryer attract the most attention. The most likely overheard sounds are those of other people: voices, flushing, water splashing.

he space feels cold and slightly uncomfortable. Because everything is amplified, I feel exposed (others can hear me, and I hear them), which makes me want to be quick and quiet. The hand dryer is the strongest discomfort source because it is loud, continuous and high-pitched; sudden door bangs alert me.

Surfaces and spatial pattern

The tiled walls, concrete ceiling and floor and the mirror are most responsible for the reverberant, harsh character; nothing soft is present to absorb. On the sketch, the loudest and highest-pitched events (hand dryer, doors) happen at the entrance and sinks, but the reverberation spreads them through the whole length of the room, so no corner feels protected.