On the trail of good urban sound
Experts from Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, including sound researcher and sound artist Andres Bosshard, have investigated the sound qualities of the inner courtyards of various buildings. The aim was to find out how the quality of urban sound can be efficiently improved.
In order to research the "urban sound" of a development, two questions need to be answered: What do you hear when you are in the courtyard? And what effect do the buildings have on this? Three "spatial shells" influence what a person hears: Firstly, the environment outside the development - the surrounding streets and their (traffic) noise. Secondly, the space between the buildings with the activities in the inner courtyard. And thirdly, the immediate space within a radius of five meters around a person or group and their conversations.
In order to investigate the interplay between these three spatial shells, the project team, including sound researcher and sound artist Andres Bosshard, carried out expert inspections with sound recordings in various courtyards and systematically evaluated them. One of the aims was to record the sounds precisely. By varying building components, it was possible to investigate their effects on the acoustics of the courtyard.
An important insight from this is that quieter is not always better, because in addition to quiet, discretion is also a requirement that residents place on an inner courtyard. The aim of the acoustic courtyard design is to achieve a balanced sound combination from all three spatial shells.
Publication on research: Sturm, Ulrike, Bürgin, Matthias and Schubert, Axel (eds.): Stadtklang. Wege zu einer hörenswerten Stadt, Volume 2: Klangraumgestaltung von Aussenräumen, vdf Hochschulverlag AG an der ETH Zürich, www.vdf.ethz.ch, 112 pages, ISBN 978-3-7281-3939-9
Photo: Camilo Montes / Unsplash
