Ana Mernik Looking Out Week 16 (Last Week of Class WOOT WOOT)

For my last blog, I'd like to take some advice from Julian Treasure, a sound expert. As students of architecture, we often hear the words "moment" and "experience," but we many times forget that those don't come just from a building's form and materials, from something we see and touch. So much of our experience in a space is linked to how it sounds. This is what Treasure calls the "invisible architecture."

In his short TED Talk, Treasure calls on architects to pay better attention to acoustics when designing spaces. Giving a hospital as an example, he shows how sound effects us physiologically as well as psychologically - when hospital rooms are loud, the nurses and doctors are more distracted from their work, and the patients and visitors more anxious. Treasure gives two simulations to prove his point. In the first, he shows how reverberation can affect the intelligibility of a teacher in a classroom; in the second, he reduces the reverberation by 60% and compares the results. People's motivation, productivity, and even health improve when reverberation is taken into account.

His talk is only about 10 minutes and worth a listen...get it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5nbWUOc9tY