Note : Rome wasn't built in a day and neither will sensory inclusive design techniques!
To create fully sensory inclusive spaces, I think as I have emphasised over the course of this project that all senses must be taken into account. Visual representation and design however has been developed over hundreds of years. As such, I feel each sense ( touch, sound, smell, taste) must be fully explored before they can work as a popular design technique.
My project will thus currently be narrowing in on one aspect of what an accessible design needs. For the purposes of my masters design project I am looking at a speculative and explorative study of sound in architecture and how digital technology can be used to improve this and allow it to be used within a design process.
Sound
Lakshmi Sandhana at the BBC says;
"Step into the underground concourses of New York’s Penn Station and you might just feel an uneasy sense of claustrophobia that’s hard to explain. Stroll across the hardwood floors at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC and a sense of calmness might descend on you. Why? Each of these buildings has its own unique voice – the way sound behaves in the structure."
Researcher Shea Trahan begins to explain this phenomenon by having us think of architecture's build up like an instrument. He says;
"the assembly of pieces which together hold in balance forces of torque and tension; or the specific curvatures and openings which direct and distribute flows of moving air" .
He discusses the architect in comparison to the cello maker;
"Just as the cello maker, so too are Architects tasked with the responsibility of discovering and manifesting the inherent natures of form and material. As with the cello maker, an architectural process which is empathic to the symphony of assemblies may also result in a finely tuned sonic instrument."
This idea of an architectural space as a "finely tuned sonic instrument" is interesting to consider when we think of ourselves as string instruments. Shea in his TED talk 'the Architecture of Sound' discusses the laws of string theory which says;
"at it's most basic subatomic level, we are all composed of one dimensional strings, whose vibration frequencies define the laws of physics. As humans we've not outside of this system, we are interactive players in this process and very well tuned to do it. The human ear enjoys three times more neurological connections to the brain than does the eye. We can detect a vibrating molecule as low as 20 beats per second or 20htz , all the way up to 20,000htz. That's an order of magnitude of 1000 times. Roughly ten octaves of sound that you can detect. Compare that to the order of magnitude of visual sight which is only 2 or roughly a single octave"
As Shea continues to say, this is a very effective tool of human cognition which we as architects are responsible for manipulating. This is very interesting in the context of my study as it further highlights the problems of relying on the visual, while also explaining this unexplainable detective/deciphering quality people with visual impairments explained to me.
Shea also discusses the Maltese Hypogeum (as a resonating chamber) in which the sound waves of the receiver and the speaker are both in sync at a certain frequency. "When two waves are in perfect sync with each other it makes a natural form of amplification called constructive interference or standing wave". Shea continues to discuss a study by UCLA neuroscientists , which showed that the brain when exposed to that phenomenon "experiences shifts in the pre frontal cortex and creates a functioning asymmetry within the brain". The only problem with the Hypogeum is that once the speaker is silenced, the sound dissipates quickly. If the acoustics of space tuned to amplify just a single tone can affect us so profoundly, what effect might a room that amplifies many have on our consciousness?
To solve this Shea then visited the Baptistry of St John in Pisa to look at reverberation. The Baptistry is architectural designed to have a longer and more varied reverberation time, which gives an immersive long lasting layered sound effect. From this Shea wondered how these two acoustic aspects could be combined to create sonically powerful architecture.
He looked at a simple physics experiment into cymatics using a vibration plate and salt. As you change the frequency the salt forms different shapes. The higher the frequency the more complex the pattern. As this experiment is one of physics, it can be defined by maths. Shea developed a grasshopper algorithm (which I cannot access sadly) which can recreate the cymatic process and orbit the shape into three dimensional symmetric forms. This allows him to spatialise unique acoustic tones.
This study by Shea is a fascinating one and one I am working to replicate myself on grasshopper. These shapes could then be brought into liberty hall as a speculative acoustic experiment. Like an expo of sonic architectural exploration. Perhaps this may be as a sequence of pavilions with different frequencies or maybe cymatics it is just one acoustic experiment among many? Perhaps there is a exploration into how humans may negotiate these irregular shapes?
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