Mark Terra-Salomão | Assignment 6B: Best Final Assignment Ever!

Not to turn the best final assignment ever into a dissertation on moral philosophy, but it's my belief that now that the final project is done it would be mildly disingenuous and not particularly expedient or useful on my part to actually design an acoustic ceiling and talk about it as if I had done it before the fact. (Not trying to call anyone out here or anything; I just don't feel comfortable personally with talking about work I've done after the fact as if I had not.) So, in my usual iconoclastic ways, I have decided to revive an old favorite and have essentially placed a scaled-up version of Alvar Aalto's Viipuri Library lecture room acoustic ceiling into my large 120-seat theater. I've always wondered how accurate Aalto's hand studies of the acoustics were, and / or whether a computational tool could recreate these studies in a fraction of the time it took Aalto.

I used Sonic's complex surface casting function. I placed the point where the theater's speaker room would be, simply because that's where most of the sound in the theater would come from (and also because Aalto's ceiling was designed to accommodate one source point at the front of the space). Ignoring the fact that Sonic likes to raycast through the surface, it seems that the acoustics of Viipuri would actually work quite well for this theater. And why reinvent the wheel, amirite? (WRONG!)

Anyway, if I were to 3D print this "tile" it would just have to be immensely scaled down, as it is not so much a tile as an entire ceiling datum. Indeed, this is what I have done with the STL file.

The scaled-down tile compared to the overall ceiling assembly

Assuming that I would actually place this object into my theater - which I already established I wouldn't, but let's try and suspend our disbelief - materially it would be more or less the same as the Viipuri Library's ceiling; that is, shaped sitecast concrete clad with high-quality wood. This is only partially a shameless cop-out, as there is a good reason to use wood - many kinds of wood have good acoustic properties. I'll never forget this because it was ingrained into my mind by my elementary-school music appreciation teacher. She would always complain that when they restored the school they didn't replace the music room's crappy metal doors with nice, acoustic, soundproofed wooden ones. Specifically I think I would use Australian or African blackwood for the ceiling cladding, as blackwood is a tonewood (wood used for making musical instruments) that according to guitar makers (via Wikipedia) is prized for "warm, clear, bright sound with good volume."

Brian Bollens | Assignment 6B

When designing for an acoustic space, It is important to create wall geometry that both absorbs sound and disperses it evenly in all directions. This design focuses more on the former and is placed at the rear of the theater on both the back wall and ceiling. It is hugely effective in minimizing echo. It absorbs almost all sound.

The tile network is made up of an arrayed grid of shapes that are similar to that of a monopoly house. The top of each shape has 2 voids that allow sound to be absorbed even more efficiently. The shapes also have an alternating pattern in which every other one is rotated 90 degrees. This allows for sound waves to bounce off of the "monopoly roof faces" and into the adjacent voids. This system of rotation allows little sound to escape as you can see in the above image.

Chandler Archbell: Best Final Assignment Ever!

The purpose of an acoustic tile in a lecture hall or theater is to diffuse sound while preventing echoes.  To accomplish this, I designed a chevron-like tile with different spacing between the raised and lowered parts to create a visually interesting form that looks continuous when put together with other tiles.  The tile also performs well at diffusing sound and preventing echoing.

Process sketch: initial iteration

single tile

assembly of tiles

sound diffusion in action

I then took my acoustic tile and placed it in my theaters.  Here is a section demonstrating the placement of the tiles.  The tiles near the back begin to turn downward in order to reflect the sound from the back of the theater back toward the audience.  The rows of tiles are hung using steel rods that are bolted to the exposed I-beams above.  The material of the panels would be a dark wood with a matte finish because of its reflective qualities with sound.  The matte finish would be added to prevent light reflection in (what is supposed to be) the dark theater.

Carolina Tamayo | Assignment 6B

For my theater tile, I decided to tie it back to one of the main features of my design: the facade.  I made my tile with the same square pattern seen in the elevation.  The only difference is that I pushed and pulled the squares in the tile to provide a desired sound effect. 

Problem | The problem with my theaters is that they sit right on top of each other so the bottom theater has a roof that slants backward.  In order to get the sound to the seats at the back, the tile would be placed in the slanted roof.  

Material | The tile would be made out of a hard, smooth material like plastic or gypsum board that would reflect the sound to the theaters at the back. The sonic image and other diagrams are represented bellow. 

Alyssa Hamilton: Looking Out Week 12

Hans Scharoun's Berlin Philharmonie is one of the most renowned acoustical spaces. The roof deserve allows for sound to reach the farthest corners without causing an echo. All the service spaces are below the main orchestra space. The tiered seating is all about gathering around the single point of sound within one community-based space. This concept was my inspiration for my Boston Cinema.

Carolina Tamayo | Assignment 6A

Simple Surface

Complex Surface

Multiple Surfaces

Theater Surfaces

Assignment 6A | Mark Terra-Salomão

Simple Surface

Complex Surface

Multiple Surfaces

Assignment 6A: Chandler Archbell

Surface Ray: Simple Surface

Surface Ray: Complex Surface

Surface Ray: Multisurface

One cool thing that I noticed about Sonic is that it automatically recalculates the vectors as soon as you change anything in the Rhino model.

Assignment 6A: Alyssa Hamilton

Surface Ray Simple | Potential Ceiling Component

Surface Ray Multi Surface | Ceiling Component and Seating Design

Surface Ray Complex Surface | Ceiling Component and Seating Design

Surface Ray Simple Surface | Current Section of Theatre Design (Sound from Back Wall)

Surface Ray Multi Surface | Current Section of Theatre Design (Sound from Above Screen)

Carolina Tamayo | Theatre Acoustics

Alyssa Hamilton: Acoustic Research

Architectural acoustics is the art/science/engineering of creative a pleasing melodic sound within a space, volume, or building. Wallace Sabine's Fogg Museum was the first to work with architectural acoustics. The science can be used to create spaces that focus on the clarity of sound, suppression of sound, or the ambiance.
Interior spaces are based on materiality and surface geometry to either absorb or reflect sound in such a way that aids the reverberation within the space. Too much reverberation and speech is muffled for audience members. Too little and the speech will not carry throughout the space.
There are many principles for creating pleasant acoustics depending on the architectural space. As stated in wikipedia, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architectural_acoustics):
There are three ways to improve workplace acoustics and solve workplace sound problems – the ABCs.

• A = Absorb (via drapes, carpets, ceiling tiles, etc.)

• B = Block (via panels, walls, floors, ceilings and layout)

• C = Cover-up (via sound masking)

While all three of these are recommended to achieve optimal results, C = Cover-up by increasing background sound produces the most dramatic improvement in speech privacy – with the least disruption and typically the lowest cost.
Principles such as these are applied to almost every architectural space in order to create a aurally pleasant experience for the inhabitants.

Example Work: The Aelous PavilionLuke Jerram designed this art/architecture piece to literally "sing in the wind". Its meant to give a unique acoustics experience by interpreting the winds direction and intensity and transforming it into beautiful music.

Chandler Archbell: Acoustics through the art of poetry

Sound.

A manifestation of itself,

it forms through waves

within the air.

Pressure changes

and deviates from the average

like hipsters in the streets.

They cause a motion,

they make a noise.

Chandler Archbell, 2014

As this prolific poem accurately explains, sound is the product of waves caused by rapid variations of pressure in the air.  These waves push and pull on air molecules, forming what are called compressions and rarefactions (similar to the peaks and troughs of normal waves).  Sound waves coming from a source either go directly into the listener's ear or reflect off surfaces and create reverberation.  Reverberation is a stream of continuing sound created when sound waves constantly reflect off surfaces after the original sound is produced.  The reverb time is the amount of time it takes for the frequency of reverberations to drop below perception level.  Because of their size, concert halls and theaters usually have a long reverb time.

Acoustic panels work best when they don't have any cover or finish that interferes with the acoustical infill or substrate.  They should be positioned to allow the sound to reflect evenly throughout the theater.  Here's a helpful image:

This sexy wood is brought to you by the National Theater of Bahrain.  The architects used wood due to its acoustically reflective surface, which allows sound to spread easily throughout the large space.  The shape of the interior shell also directs sound where it needs to go.  The theater space is also completely soundproof, and it exists as a separate entity from the rest of the building.

Dat separation.