Eugene Jahng | BEST ASSIGNMENT EVER

One of the design aspects of my Cinematek was the use of ETFE cushions on the roof of the entire theatre building. ETFE is a transparent plastic membrane, which is why only the roof of the theatre had to be a different material. Since my theaters were stacked and only the second theatre's roof was visible along with the transparent cushions, I decided to mimic the appearance of the ETFE roof by having a wavy, undulating ceiling for the theatre as well. The ceiling is composed of a set of alternating curves that scale larger as it reaches the end of the theatre and creates an interesting pattern alike the transparent cushions.

Along the ceiling I added tiles that also copied the wave pattern, which would be used for the reflection of sound. These would be used every other 'wave,' creating a checkerboard pattern on the ceiling only visible to the audience. These tiles would be used to reflect sound, while the exposed bits of the ceiling would absorb sound. I would imagine the ceiling to be concrete to allow for blockage of exterior noises, then covered with another layer of absorbing material. The tiles would be suspended from the ceiling.

(Image from allnoisecontrol.com)

Madhura Kharche: Final Assignment

For my tile design, I created a unit that could be multiplied at different scales to fit together and create any desired shapes. The tile is a 1’ x 1’ square with .5” thickness. 

The square shape allows it to be versatile and fit together with any scale of the same unit. The tile itself has a convex top, a portion of which is carved out to form a concave form. 

This combination, coupled with the versatility of the shape of the tile, I thought, would help create surfaces that allow sound rays to bounce off of the surface. My findings from the first part of this assignment using sonic supported that convex and concave shapes greatly influence the way sound waves bounce off of a surface.

The tile would be used as cladding on the interior walls of the theaters.

I let the tiles be thin enough to work as cladding to save material and production costs. The mass of the walls may be built with fire rated gypsum board attached to steel columns, and the tiles will be clad onto the boards.

Unit 

The multi surface sonic study shows how sound can be contained within the room  and bounced towards the insides and the back of the room using concave shaped walls.

Shannon Earnest: Best Final Assignment Ever

It is important in architectural situations such as theaters or concert halls to consider the repercussions of the activities occurring in the spaces. These panels would be placed on the walls of the theaters to trap and absorb the sound of the films playing in the rooms. They are designed in a two-part system so that a pocket of space is created between the curved tile and the wall on which they are placed. By creating this pocket of air, sound can enter the pocket and reverberate around inside of that space and be absorbed rather than bouncing off of the wall and back into the theater or other adjacent spaces.

Like a few other people, I got home and realized that Rhino conveniently wouldn't load the grasshopper plug in. However, from my experience with SONIC in the past assignments and SONIC testing that I did with my first design, I can make an educated assumption as to how the sound waves would interact with my tile surface. I believe that the sound would hit the tiles and some of it would be reflected because of the convex curved surface and the rest of the sound would hit the wall and be redirected into the pocket space that I was talking about before. To minimize the reflection of sound on the curved surfaces, I would make these tiles out of a dense foam material and then cover them in fabric. From my research, it seems that this is one of the best and most common construction methods for making acoustic paneling that absorbs sound. 

The acoustic tiles would be attached to a concrete wall using a method similar to anchor bots in which the bolt or screw is cast into the concrete and the tiles have a void for the screw to fit into and are then hooked onto the wall.

Ana Mernik Assignment 6B "Best Final Assignment Eva"

For my tile, I tried to focus on the experience of being in the smaller theater of my Cinematek Project: a monument-like theater that attracts social gatherings and activity. As such, the theater is open on both sides: the first gives a clear view to the entrance of the building and the open restaurant area, while the second connects the theater to the busyness of the outside world on the other side of the glass facade and gives ample space for unconventional use such as theater and musical performances. Additional to this visual axis through the building, steps that frame the entrance of the small theater provide stepping that serves as seating for people who may want to enjoy the movie without being fully engaged.

As such, I wanted the tile to speak to the experience of the open, art-house theater, meaning have the ability to focus sound at the center of the theater where the seats are, yet allow for diffusion of sound to both (open) sides for the enjoyment of people passing by or grabbing a lunch before heading to see the movie.

Through stages of manipulation of a simple flat rectangle, I was able to arrive at a shape that would do just that. While keeping edges linear to allow for a simple connection between the tiles, I manipulated points on the simple surface to create wave-like rises and depressions - with orientation leading them to the two outside edges where the theater openings are. The rectangular base is also extruded to give space for all the wiring, cladding, padding, software, and whatever else is needed to make the acoustic tiles work.

As far as materials go, the tiles would alternate between wood and site-cast concrete, creating a visually interesting pattern of reflective and absorptive panels that direct good quality sound to the middle and edges of the theater space. Wood is used not only because of its acoustic properties but also for its psychological effects - it will give the open space feel more comfortable and intimate, creating a unique theater experience that extends beyond the theater itself to include more people yet touch each visitor on an individual, even personal, level.

The connections would be a drill (adhesive) attaching to the ceiling, crossing a noise barrier batts and a furring strip, to attach the panels.

 Voila (with an accent on the a).

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.

Kmquinn_Assign6B

When thinking about acoustics and how they function in theaters it’s important to understand that even though you have speakers and amps, the theatrical space for sound is still important. Sound doesn't all come from one place, there is a dynamic about it, which is why sound is used to be able to locate the position of an object in space, based on what ear you hear things from and how far away the sound was made. In theaters speakers are set up so that you have voices and the main dialogue coming at you from the front of the theater while all the background noise and other sound effect hit you from the side. In scary movies the switch it up which is why you feel a sense of being watched because the noise is coming from behind you. The same thing happens in headphones, the bass and tenor will be split between the right and left headphone. (When you listen to duet both voices don’t come out the same ear). This is important to recognize because it means that in theaters you can’t have point direction when it comes to acoustics. Point direction is what happens when you have a funnel type room or a concave shape. It points all the sound particles into one specific point. In theaters you want an equal spread of the noise, so that every seat is the best seat. The best way to do this is to have no parallel walls, floors, or ceilings. And if you want to be really fancy you should have them curved even. My acoustic tiles are all curved tiles stuck against a circular room in to absorb and diffuse sound evenly.  

Convex curves spread sound evenly

Concave curves spread sound with a point-source

A diagram about concave and convex curves

The Curved acoustic tiles pinned against the curved wall

The curved wall of the theater space and the acoustic effect on it

A picture of the .STL file

Nahyung Kim: Best final assignment ever (Assignment 6B)

For my cinematek proposal, I explored the idea of separation and distinction of the theaters from the other programmatic elements. There is a physical separation of the two theaters, stacked on top of another, from the rest of the building that is surrounding this volume. The floor plate of the rest of the building is not connected to the theater volumes and there are bridges at certain points that connect them. To further articulate this idea,  I used different materials for these two parts of the cinematek. The theaters are enveloped in a concrete mass. Other than this volume, the cinematek is structurally supported on steel hollow columns, steel joists, and beams, and these are wrapped with a glass curtain wall.
Through the acoustic panels which would go inside the concrete envelope of the theaters, I wanted to extend the idea of separation by creating undulating surfaces. Movie-goers would be able to touch these panels where it is protruding into the aisles and it would be more difficult, or implied that it is not intended for them, to have physical contact with the panel at points where the surface is moving back. These vertical panels would be individually attached to the wall (with some kind of built-in sound system / speakers), leaving gaps in between each panel for sound and other utilities. The tiles would hopefully be made of steel, or another kind of metal, to still show the connection

between the theater and the other parts of the cinematek.

attachment of the acoustic panels to the wall

sketch of theater interior

SONIC performance of one panel

SONIC performance of panel assembly

Danielle Lehmann: Assignment 6B

My tile consists of a singular module with several different pieces of wood attached to it at certain points. The wood pieces are different thicknesses and lengths, but each module is interlocking with each other.

A few weeks ago I did a "Looking Out" post on a woman who took discarded wood, shaped it and made acoustic panels with it. The wood was beautiful, recycled and a conversational piece. The tiles run the length of the long sides of my theaters to create two walls (per theater) of wonderful wooden, acoustic, systems. Although the post was inspiring, I decided on this system because of my overall design had two interlocking rectangles. My project was focused on person to person interactions and how to facilitate those interactions. I hope that having an interesting and varied wall this this would create a topic for strangers to talk about. In addition the wood acts as an excellent acoustic diffuser and absorber of sound. In addition, the wood pieces are different depths which would reflect and absorb the sound differently depending on how much it would protrude into the theater.

Interlocking modules create a seamless wall

Mounting the panels to the walls

Refraction and reflection of sound off the wood

Leaving CMU before the 3D printing would finish, I decided to make my own physical model