urbanLab Magazin 2021 - Transformation

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Buildings that aim to receive a certification of sustainable
construction might have to meet requirements of indoor
environmental quality including acoustics.
SOUND AND PUBLIC HEALTH
Sound plays a key role in the way that
people understand and engage in their
environment, influencing their development,
behaviour and communication.
Whether listening to music, hearing
traffic noise on a highway, or sleeping in
bed at night, sound is always present,
considering that even in a “very quiet”
moment, human bodies are sound
sources themselves (i.e. vocal sounds,
heartbeats, breathing, digestion, etc.).
The sounds that we subjectively, and
sometimes collectively, identify as “unwanted”
are considered noise. Noise
could be unpleasant because of its
quantity - a sound might be so loud that
it is annoying or even painful regardless
of its content, and/or because of its
quality - a sound could be annoying without
being loud. Also, there are sounds
that are not received through the ears,
as they might be out of our range of hearing,
but they are certainly perceived
in the form of vibrations.
The acoustic environment is composed
of the interaction between sounds and
physical boundaries like landscape and
infrastructure, to be received and interpreted
individually from person to person.
According to Pijanowski et al, (2011)
sounds can be originated by geophysical
sources such as the movement of
water or wind, biological sources such
as birds singing, crickets chirping or
people speaking, and anthropological
sources produced by humans such as
the sounds of loud speakers, musical instruments,
machines that produce road
or air traffic noise, industrial noise, or
any other sound originated by human
technology.
According to the World Health Organization,
noise pollution is the second
most harmful environmental stressor
in Europe, behind air pollution, (WHO,
2018), being accountable for about 20
million reported adults suffering annoyance,
8 million people suffering
sleep disturbances, over 900,000 cases
of hypertension and at least 10,000
cases of premature death in Europe each
year (European Environment Agency,
2014), burdening health care systems,
insurance companies, and the real estate
market among other economies.
URBAN NOISE AND BUILDING
ENVELOPES
Populated cities with dense urban environments
are characteristically associated
with noise pollution due to
the greater amount of vehicles as well
as industrial and leisure activities producing
sounds that propagate through
dense urban infrastructure. Building
envelopes are the physical boundaries
that separate exterior unconditioned
space from indoor space, and facades,
as part of the building envelope, fulfill
different functions such as controlling
the transfer of air, water, heat, light, and
sound.
Many people spend most of their time
indoors, where traditionally, some level
of acoustic treatment is considered
when designing spaces like class rooms,
hospitals, offices or auditoriums. This
has a clear correlation to practices in the
construction industry such as the use of
acoustic panels on walls and ceilings to
control the sound in rooms, or the use
of acoustic insulation in windows and
facades. Furthermore, buildings that
aim to receive a certification of sustainable
construction might have to meet
requirements of indoor environmental
quality including acoustics.
Regarding the acoustics outside of
buildings, facades occupy a significant
amount of the vertical surfaces in the
urban fabric being in direct contact
HUMAN CENTERED DESIGN
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