Acoustics for Sustainable Design and Well-Being
Intro
According to some neuroscientists and philosophers humans have, not five, but rather somewhere between 22 and 33 senses. Among our lesser-known senses are proprioception, which describes our ability to recognize our bodies in space, thermoception, which enables us to sense heat, and nociception, the perception of pain.
Despite our great sensory abilities, we often end up shaping the world around us almost exclusively to please the eye. Our culture prioritizes vision over other senses, even though the way we interact with our surroundings affects all of our senses.
“Architecture and design talk to the entire body and all its sensory realms,” explains architect and founder of Norm Architects, Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen. “Good design must not only look good, but also feel good, sound good, even smell good.”
Micah Stanley, Lawton Stanley Architects
Good design—multisensory design—opens itself to a spectrum of possibilities by recognizing that our senses are interconnected. “Our vision works with our other senses, and through our stored collection of sensory memories—knowing how certain things feel, smell, taste or sound like—we’re familiar with the feel of a surface before having even touched it,” says Bjerre-Poulsen. Just by looking at a material, we can identify its composition, its weight, its texture, and perhaps even its smell.
Designing for the senses allows us to create welcoming, harmonious spaces that put people at ease by tuning into their needs, everyday lives, and routines. It supports everyone’s opportunity to experience and thrive in interior spaces.
Let’s take a closer look at sound and acoustic design, and the ways that it affects our experience. When the commercial buildings where we spend the majority of our time— from workplaces to schools and hospitals—are designed with acoustic comfort in mind, this can support comfort, well-being, productivity, sustainable design, and more.
What is acoustic comfort?
We are constantly exposed to sound, from the humming and whirring of appliances to the clamor of traffic. When sound is unwanted, we perceive it as noise. Noisy spaces can be stressful and difficult to use—like a restaurant where diners have to strain to hear their companions or a train station where commuters hustle to resolve travel logistics over the din. When acoustic comfort is compromised, occupants’ well-being suffers.
In offices, noise can result in annoyance, heightened stress levels, and reduced focus, productivity, and performance. In healthcare settings, it can slow patients’ recovery by causing stress and disrupting rest. And in classrooms, it can negatively affect learning. Stephany Mason, Technical Director at the Collaborative for High-Performance Schools says, “We equate trying to hear in a poor acoustical environment to trying to read in a room with poor lighting. It increases stress, your concentration decreases, and it impairs your learning.”
About 73% of Americans work in offices. A majority of today’s offices are open, where workers share space, or are divided into benching units. Open offices have become popular because they bring more opportunities for collaboration and flexibility, and offer sustainability benefits such as greater daylight access. However, it can be difficult to achieve good acoustic performance and privacy in these kinds of spaces. Moderate sound levels, no higher than 45dBA, are best for an office environment. But open offices often have 60dBA or higher. In fact, acoustics are one of the lowest-performing variables of environmental satisfaction in offices. Simply put, offices can get quite noisy.
Hayward Industries
Clemmons, North Carolina
Productivity and performance can be affected by noise and a lack of speech privacy—being able to overhear conversations at work causes reduced focus, more distractions, greater error rates, and higher stress levels. Conversely, knowing that colleagues can overhear your conversations can also be uncomfortable and stressful. In noisy workplaces, workers develop negative attitudes and emotions because they feel a lack of control over their environment. Over time, this can translate to higher rates of employee turnover, downtime, and sick time.
There are many ways to foster acoustic comfort in offices—we’ll break down some of the most popular strategies in the following section—but here’s just one: in a recent project for Greenpeace’s new headquarters, we partnered with Perkins&WIll to create a ceiling scape that helps reduce noise. It’s made of a custom version of Swell, our modular tiles with undulating, wave-like textures in a new color palette featuring a gradient of blues and greens.
Acoustic performance and sustainability
In recent years, the sustainable design movement has become more interested in how the built environment affects occupants’ well-being, and this shift has brought more attention to acoustic comfort. Sustainable building certifications like WELL V2 and LEED v4 have introduced acoustic performance credits and guidelines that aim to bolster occupant health and well-being. These metrics are often included within the larger category of indoor environmental quality (IEQ). IEQ measurements are made up of several factors that can contribute to health, well-being, comfort, and productivity: indoor air quality, thermal comfort, lighting, and acoustics.
But designing for acoustic performance and other IEQ measures doesn’t always go hand in hand with sustainable design. Studies show that overall acoustic comfort and satisfaction are actually lower in “green” buildings than those that aren’t green-rated. That’s because some of the common sustainable building strategies result in poor acoustics. For example, open offices designed to increase daylighting and natural ventilation often inadvertently create noisy work environments due to a lack of physical sound barriers. Under-floor heating also leads to the elimination of carpets, which can absorb sound. At the same time, planning for both acoustic performance and sustainability can also allow for single solutions that address multiple concerns. For example, an insulated building envelope might both reduce energy use and protect interiors from outside noises.
Take a holistic approach to evaluate how different design decisions about aesthetics, functionality, and sustainability can impact acoustic performance. There are various types of noise issues to consider—from outside the building, other parts of the building, and structure-borne noises—and each can be addressed in different ways. Ideally, this would start early in the design process, by assessing the site itself. Is it on a busy street? If the plans include orienting the building in a certain way to optimize daylighting and ventilation, how might this impact acoustics? The first step is often to just listen and note what you’re hearing. Does it bother you?
2023 Turf Experience Center
Chicago, Illinois
Materials that absorb sound and reduce reverberation tend to contribute to acoustic comfort. Choose materials that not only provide better acoustics, but also meet sustainability criteria such as low VOCs and embodied carbon, and are free of harmful chemicals (look for Declare labels and Red List Free). Softer flooring materials like carpeting, cork, or resilient textile flooring, absorb more sound than concrete but require more frequent maintenance and replacement.
To address acoustic design challenges, designers employ three primary strategies:
1. Absorb: Use sound-absorbing materials like curtains, carpets, acoustic ceiling products, and acoustic wall treatments to reduce reverberation and maintain acoustic balance.
2. Block: Use partitions, walls, floors, ceilings, and other barriers to interrupt the paths that carry sound from the noise source to the receiver.
3. Cover: Use sound masking—either white noise or background noise—to enhance speech privacy and reduce distracting noise.
Acoustics in action
Turf’s products fall primarily into the “absorb” strategy. What does this look like in practice? In one project, Turf worked with Lawton Stanley Architects to create a custom acoustic solution for Ever, a Michelin two-star restaurant in Chicago. The restaurant’s owners wanted to create an intimate dining space that amplified taste by turning down the volume on the other senses. That way, diners could focus on taste and the beauty of each plate. Turf conceived a customized system, folding baffles for superior dampening, placing them around light fixtures, and creating “cloud” modules on the ceiling to trap echo and dampen sound.
Conclusion
Ultimately, buildings are successful if they meet the needs of the people who use them. “Working with architecture and design means clarifying needs; understanding people and their way of life; their daily preferences, and little things that’ll make their lives better,” says Bjerre-Poulsen. “It is not merely about mechanics and psychics, but about psychology, biology, anthropology and philosophy.” When we look holistically at the experience of working in an open office or eating at a restaurant and pay attention to the sensory details of the space, we’re enhancing people’s experiences. Learn more about ways to design for acoustic comfort and sustainability on Turf’s Inspiration hub or reach out to a representative to see if Turf is a good fit for your project.