Room 1: Remisé
Purpose: Eventroom
Room Properties:
Rectangular, overheight, completely covered with Woodpannels.

The space is surprisingly well-balanced for music. Despite having many hard surfaces such as brick, glass, and concrete, it conveys a sense of warmth when listening to music. Based on its dimensions, one might expect the sound to feel distant and muddy, but this is not the case. For me, this makes the space a noteworthy acoustic environment. It stands out not only because of its materiality (especially the wood, which adds comfort) but also because of its acoustic qualities.

While walking through the space and clapping my hands, I can hear the wooden panels beneath my feet, slightly loose, creaking and squeaking. There is little overlapping sound when clapping, but I can clearly hear the large glass doors rattling when I run or jump on the floor. There is also a faint echo when clapping near the furnace, and I notice some exterior noise entering through it. Additionally, I can hear the glasses in the upper cabinet rattling.

If I were to describe the space, I would call it “homely” and somewhat old-fashioned. The combination of wooden materiality, squeaking sounds, and the presence of a furnace creates this impression. One might imagine a farmer’s house in the mountains, small, pragmatic, and functional. It does exactly what it needs to do, and nothing more.

In words, the room feels alive, warm, crisp, and well balanced.

Room 2: Winter Garden
Purpose: Private Resting Area
Room Properties:
Rectangular, normal Height

The space is acoustically noteworthy because of its semi-open configuration, which gives the room a certain ambiguity.

It is fascinating to notice how the same sound changes character when you move just a few meters within the space.

Similar to the first room, the floor here is also wooden, but it produces a completely different sound. Instead of the older floor construction with its characteristic squeaking, the wood appears to be mounted differently. It produces more of a “bonk” sound rather than a squeak, and it only responds when stepping on it, not when stepping off. (In the first room, there were two distinct squeaking sounds, one under pressure and one after releasing the pressure.)

Another striking observation is how the position in the room affects the sound quality. Near the furniture, the sound is crisp and almost sterile. As you move slightly away from the furniture, the sound becomes fuller, more lush, and even a bit echoey. Moving toward the exterior of the room, the sound again becomes more direct and crisp on one side, while on the other side it feels cavernous, as though the space could accommodate additional resonance or elements.

An unexpected acoustic effect occurs when clapping next to the metal lamp. It seems to absorb part of the sound but then reflects it back with a metallic resonance, likely caused by the lamp’s frame.

In simple terms, the room feels spacious and somewhat empty on one side, while the closer you move to the exterior, the clearer and more defined the sound becomes.

Assignement Nr. 2

Room Nr 1.

Each day begins with a transition from private space into the public rhythm of the city. As I walk toward the main station in Winterthur, sound becomes the dominant marker of this shift. The first thing I notice is the sharp screech of metal on metal as train wheels turn into the curves of the track. This high, drawn-out noise cuts through the background of traffic and urban movement. Beneath it lies a steadier rhythm, the repeated impact of wheels on rail joints. It feels surprisingly close to the tempo of my morning music, as if the city itself moves in a similar beat.

As I get closer to the station, the soundscape grows denser. Footsteps echo across the hard floor, each one amplified by the large open space. People walk quickly, their steps overlapping in a mixture of urgency and routine. Suitcases roll, conversations mix with public announcements, and the distant hum of trains fills the air. The materials of the hall-glass, concrete and steel, reflect every sound, making even small noises seem louder and more present. The echoes create a constant blur, where it is hard to separate one sound from another. There is a sense of tension in the space, shaped by movement and anticipation. The voice from the loudspeaker merges into the crowd’s noise, while certain sounds, like the sharp closing of train doors or the tone before departure, cut through with clarity.

When I step inside the train, the atmosphere changes immediately. The noise outside is replaced by a controlled quietness. As my noise-cancelling headphones activate, the reflections and metallic sharpness disappear. The contrast is physical and emotional. I suddenly feel enclosed in a smaller, calmer world that isolates me from the public rhythm I have just left behind.

Room Nr. 2

Later in the day, the soundscape of the lecture hall presents an entirely different form of rhythm. The large concrete room is filled with people, yet it feels focused rather than chaotic. As the lecture begins, the professor’s voice becomes the main element of the space. It carries evenly through the room, supported by the microphone. Around me, the faint clicking of keyboards begins, rising and falling depending on the importance of what is being said. The rhythm of typing becomes a quiet pulse that mirrors the flow of information.

Occasionally, other sounds break into this rhythm. A chair creaks, a zipper opens or closes, and sometimes a backpack falls softly against the floor. When a slide captures attention, the room grows lively again, followed by moments of complete stillness. There are occasional bursts of laughter, or the quiet steps of a late student entering. The space breathes with the rhythm of focus and distraction. The sound of learning is not silence but a mix of small, familiar noises that together create an atmosphere of concentration.

Both environments, the station and the lecture hall, reveal how sound defines the experience of space. The station is full of reflections, speed and metallic pressure. It pushes me forward and demands alertness. The lecture hall, by contrast, draws me inward and allows for attention and thought. In both cases, sound is not a background condition but a central part of how I move, feel and exist within these places.

Assignement Nr. 3
RT60 Measurement of my Sleeping Room

The Room i chose shows an RT60 drop of around 0.3s.
Which is quite good.
The rooms materials are mostly plaster. But the Cloths, carpets and Bedsheet makes the Reverb really low in the room, concluding in a small RT60 result.

Final Assignement Andrin Baumann

Proposed Reuse of the Space as a Small Music Room

The intention is to transform the existing space into a small music room suitable for intimate concerts and rehearsals. The current acoustic behaviour of the room is characterised by a cool, hollow concrete sound that requires quiet working conditions. The interior surfaces consist mainly of smooth concrete, plaster and glass, which create short but noticeable echoes during speech. As a classic shoebox volume with parallel walls, the room generates light flutter echoes and strong specular reflections across most frequencies. Only the ceiling provides a degree of diffusion due to its suspended structure and visible service installations. Overall the space feels empty, acoustically disconnected from its surroundings and relatively lifeless.

Under these conditions the room does not meet SIA requirements for a music space (A1). The reverberation time currently exceeds three seconds across most frequency bands, far above the recommended value of approximately 1.3 seconds for this room volume and intended musical use. A complete reduction to this value would require heavy absorption. As a first strategic step, the goal is to reduce the reverberation time to roughly 1.5 to 1.6 seconds across the majority of frequencies, corresponding to a decrease of just over one second. This provides a more realistic intervention level while still significantly improving musical clarity and articulation.

To achieve this reduction, I propose a dual acoustic treatment installed on the main concrete walls. In the lower zone of the walls, a Helmholtz resonator system should be introduced. This system contains two absorber types with different cavity depths and material thicknesses, visible through two distinct perforation patterns. This configuration allows the resonator body to target low and low-mid frequencies effectively by trapping these bands inside the cavities. Above the Helmholtz structure, a layer of porous absorbers should be added to address the higher frequencies that the resonators do not attenuate.

Since a music room should not only reduce reverberation but also avoid excessive dryness and preserve pleasant spatiality, the wall system is shaped as a soft wave profile rather than a flat plane. This breaks the strict parallelism of the room and supports improved scattering of reflected sound, complementing the diffusion already provided by the ceiling. The combined effect is a space with more controlled reverberation, better clarity, and improved spaciousness.

Beyond acoustic performance, the intervention also enhances the experiential quality of the space. The use of timber in the Helmholtz system introduces visual warmth and reduces the cold, monolithic character of the existing concrete shell. The room becomes more suitable not only for musical use but also for everyday working conditions, with significantly reduced echo and a more comfortable atmosphere overall.