Assignement 1
Space 1: HIL Entrance
The entrance to the HIL building isn’t only an access point to the structure, it is also a safe space where you are engulfed and therefor protected by wind and weather and can smoke your cigarette in peace. But this isn’t the only reason one gets attracted to this space.
Because of the single opening outward and the wall stretching out which takes sounds from outside and redirects them inside, you aren’t engulfed in the commosion and chaos which takes place at Hönggerberg, yet you aren’t isolated and stuffed in a room. You can enjoy peace, because this entrance isn’t the mos popular and still have background of audio cues from what’s happening outside.
Also the enclosed space makes conversation easy, you don’t have to shout to overcome any noise as you would have to, by simply stepping a foot outside of this place and you don’t have to overcome your own reverb, as the walls are close enough and their materials such, that you can hear your conversation partner crisp.
Space 2: HIL P2 stairway
This is simply the outside entrance to the p2 garage and the outside stairway, yet it is an interesting transition point from multiple spaces.
Assignement 2
Village train station Döttingen:
The train station is particular step in my daily journey to ETH as it is often the final place where i finally decide to put in my earbuds and isolate myself from the sensory overload of an amalgamation of irritating sound. It is a place where the soundscape changes vastly depending on the time of day, as in the early morning it is mostly quiet and you can even listen to the birds chirping, as the clock ticks to eight the place attracts the more conversation happy people and you start noticing the heavy traffic in the background at midday you experience a mix of both quietness and rumble of people talking, however the constant return in the evening at night, as you can almost always garuantee that you will find the unemployed huddled up at the train station kiosk talking loudly smoking weed and drinking beer while often playing loud music from their portable speakers. the funny thing is that the most catchy sounds and overheard sounds exchange roles depending on the time of day, as in the moring the cue to put in my earbuds is the sound of the approaching train which reverbrates around the corner through the train tracks, while you tend to overhear the few conversations in the morning dew. In the evening these roles change as the unemployed have mastered the art of being hard to ignore rather shouting at each other than talking, generating such a constant rumble that you cannot rely on acoustic cues anymore to notify you of the train approaching.
Hydroelectric power plant Beznau:
An almost daily ritual of mine is an evening walk through the forest along the river with my mother after dinner, where the foliage absorbs almost everything and you can clearly notice the isolated chirping of birds. at the midpoint of the journey where you reach the end of the way you can walk along the river because you have reached the powerplant is a constant rumble of the hydroelectric plant generators. you can hear that you have neared the midway point as you are passing holes on the riverside foliage which enable the constant rumble to propagate itself into the pathway. The origin of the sound cannot be pinpointed without the visual clue of the plant, however the sound only catches your attention and disturbs you when first notice it, the more you come along the way and the rumble surrounds you, you become accustomed to it so much so, that it appears to you as if it were not there.
Assignement 3
For the experiment i chose my first room, the entrance at the HIL building.
After listening in while there and analysing the audio i recorded i guess the RT60 time to be somewhere around 0.7-1s.
Even tough the room surfaces consist of metal and glass panels, there are no visible or audible echoes.
Task 2: With the calculator i got reverb times of between 0.8 to 2.8 seconds
Assignement 4
The room, how it stands now, has a STI of over 1.5s, which makes conversation diffucult and is generally conceived as a loud place as soon as some commotion takes place there.
I want to make a pool hall/indoor lounge out of it, which means it has to be a lively space, however you should be able should be able to participate in an activity like playing snooker without feeling that you are making a lot of noise, however at the same time you should be able to hold a conversation without having to shout or repeat yourself. This would need the room to meet a requirement of around 0.75s to 1.2s at max.
From lessons of lectures and a real world example of a room i rent with my friends where we play pool, that we acoustically treated. the ceiling, especially for such a big room, is a good place to start. so putting acoustic paneling with 15mm and a 30mm airgap already works wonders. After calculating the impact of the leather seats the pool table and the people, we are able to reach a RT60 ranging from 0.8s to 1.1s. With little addition, we can transform this room into a agreeable space to spend time with friends.
For the hell of it i also calculated the impact it would have to layer the walls with visible bricks, so that the look of the place would be more compatible with it’s new use, however this added negligible change to RT60, so besides the slight scattering effect the porous bricks would add, you could add brick walls without worry for the acoustic compability.
