Acoustic Design of Ordinary Spaces: Offices, Schools, Healthcare Facilities, Restaurants, and Retail

Background

Picture yourself in a big cathedral. All the hard surfaces of the space make the sound bounce back and forth and you feel the energy of the sound without hearing exactly what is said just a few metres away. This is, in many cases, the exact same situation one has in ordinary spaces where people spend most of our time of their daily life. We often design for acoustics in performance spaces… don’t people have ears outside of concert halls and auditoria?

Acoustically hard materials (where sound cannot penetrate to be absorbed and thus reflected back to the room) support sound levels to escalate when activities are performed. In these spaces, it is likely to encounter unpleasant environments (i.e. long reverberation, low intelligibility and high sound levels). This, in turn, can activate the so-called Lombard effect (involuntary tendency of speakers to increase their vocal effort in order to try to improve their audibility). Good room acoustics should be tailored for each situation depending on (i) the type of activity performed in the space, (ii) the people that perform the activities inside the room, and of course (iii) the room treatment. In the following, a brief state-of-the-art will be given.