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Lakshmi Sandhana, The BBC, writes about how the acoustic qualities of our homes, offices, and public spaces impacts our comfort level and may even affect our moods.
Sandhana notes that even though we rely on eyes to help us navigate our world, “our ears are constantly picking up information from our surroundings that unconsciously alters how we feel about a space.”
Fortunately, people are starting to understand that buildings and spaces need to be acoustically satisfying and not just visually attractive or useful. Writes Sandhana:
Scientific research suggests they are wise to do so. Noisy work and home settings have been proven to annoy people, and noise annoyance itself has been linked to depression and anxiety. Furthermore, issues concentrating in the workplace due to office noise and intermittent noise has been found to significantly reduce human performance.
Not to mention how noise affects our ability to enjoy a meal.
Sandhana reports that the way sound interacts with a building’s physical structure can even affect our emotions, noting, for example, that an open space can make us feel freer.
And there are whole disciplines, now, says Sandhana, that are focusing on materials and technologies that could help abate noise in cities and reduce sound pressures above recommended levels. In fact, Sandhana tells us that virtual reality systems are allowing architects to hear “how the spaces they design might sound like through ‘auralisations’ of structures using acoustic modeling softare.”
It’s all very exciting. But perhaps most exciting of all is reading that sound and noise in public and private spaces may finally be getting the attention that it deserves.
Originally posted at Silencity.com.
