Why architects need to use their ears Julian Treasure

you

you

it’s time to start designing for our

ears architects and designers tend to

focus exclusively on these they use

these to design with and they designed

for them which is why we end up sitting

in restaurants that look like this and

sound like this shouting from a foot

away

by our dinner companion or why we get on

airplanes which constitute an alien

powers somebody talking through an

old-fashioned telephone handset are a

cheap stereo system making us jump out

of our skin we’re designing environments

that make us crazy and it’s not just our

quality of life which suffers it’s our

health our social behavior and our

productivity as well how does this work

well two ways first of all ambience I

have a whole TED talk about this sound

effects us physiologically

psychologically cognitively and

behaviorally all the time the sound

around us is affecting us even though

we’re not conscious of it there’s a

second way though as well that’s

interference communication requires

sending and receiving and I have another

whole TED talk about the importance of

conscious listening but I can send as

well as I like and you can be brilliant

conscious listeners if the space i’m

sending in is not effective that

communication can’t happen spaces tend

to include noise and acoustics a room

like this has oku sticks this one very

good acoustics many rooms are not so

good let me give you some examples from

a couple of areas which I think we all

care about health and education when I

was visiting my terminally ill father a

hospital I was asking myself how does

anybody get well in a place that sounds

like this hospital sound is getting

worse all the time noise levels in

hospitals have doubled in the last few

and it affects not just the patients but

also the people working there I think

you would like for dispensing errors to

be zero wouldn’t we and yet as noise

levels go up so do the errors in

dispensing made by the staff in

hospitals most of all though it affects

the patients and that could be you it

could be me sleep is absolutely crucial

to recoveries when we regenerate when we

rebuild ourselves and with threatening

noise like this going on your body even

if you are able to sleep your body is

telling you I’m under threat this is

dangerous and the quality of sleep is

degraded and so is our recovery there

are just huge benefits to come from

designing for the ears in our healthcare

this is an area I intend to take on this

year education when I see a classroom

that looks like this can you imagine how

this sounds I am forced to ask myself a

question now that’s a little unfair some

of my best friends are architects and

they definitely do have ears but I think

sometimes they don’t use them when

they’re designing buildings here’s a

case in point this is a 32 million pound

flagship Academy school which was built

quite recently in the UK and designed by

one of Britain’s top architects

unfortunately it was designed like a

corporate headquarters with a vast

central atrium and classrooms leading

off it with no back walls at all the

children couldn’t hear their teachers

they had to go back in and spend six

hundred thousand pounds putting the

walls in let’s stop this madness of

open-plan classrooms right now please

it’s not just these modern buildings

which suffer old-fashioned classrooms

suffer too a study in Florida just a few

years ago found that if you’re sitting

where this photograph was taken in the

classroom row for speech intelligibility

is just fifty percent children are

losing one word in two now that doesn’t

mean they only get half their education

but it does mean they have to work very

hard to join the dots and understand

what’s going on this is affected

massively by reverberation time how

reverb or into room is in a classroom

with a reverberation time of 1.2 seconds

which is pretty common this is what it

sounds like

really

just a few digits

zero not so good is it if you take that

one point two seconds down to naught

point four seconds by installing

acoustic treatment sound absorbing

materials and so forth this is what you

get in language infinitely many words

can be written with a small set of

letters in arithmetic infinitely many

numbers can be composed from just a few

digits with the help of the symbol 0

what a difference now that education you

would receive and thanks to the British

acoustician Adrian James for those

simulations the signal was the same the

background noise was the same all that

change was the acoustics of the

classroom in those two examples if

education can be likened to watering a

garden which I think now this affair

metaphor sadly much of the water is

evaporating before it reaches the

flowers especially for some groups for

example those with hearing impairment

now that’s not just deaf children that

could be any child who’s got a cold glue

ear an ear infection even hay fever on a

given day 1 in 8 children fall into that

group on any given day then you have

children for whom English is a second

language or whatever they’re being

taught in is a second language in the UK

that’s more than ten percent of the

school population and finally after

Susan Cain’s wonderful TED talk in

February we know that introverts find it

very difficult to relate when they’re in

a noisy environment doing group work add

those up that is a lot of children who

are not receiving their education

properly it’s not just the children who

are affected though this study in

Germany found the average noise level in

classrooms is 60

by decibels I have to really raise my

voice to talk over 65 decibels of sound

and teachers are not just raising their

voices this chart maps the teachers

heart rate against the noise level noise

goes up heart rate goes up that is not

good for you in fact 65 decibels is the

very level at which this big survey of

all the evidence on noise and health

found that that is the threshold for the

danger of myocardial infarction to you

and me that’s a heart attack it may will

not be pushing the boat out too far to

suggest that many teachers are losing

significant life expectancy by teaching

in environments like that day after day

what does it cost to treat a classroom

down to that naught point for second

reverberation time two and a half

thousand pounds and the Essex study

which has just been done in the UK which

incidentally showed that when you do

this you do not just make a room that’s

suitable for hearing-impaired children

you make a room where behavior improves

and results improved significantly this

found that sending a child out of area

to a school that does have such a room

if you don’t have one costs 90,000

pounds a year I think the economics are

pretty clear on this I’m glad that

debate is happening on this I just

moderated a major conference in London a

few weeks ago called sound education

which brought together top acousticians

government people teachers and so forth

we’re at last starting to debate this

issue and the benefits that are

available for designing for the ears in

education unbelievable out of that

conference is incidentally also came a

free app which is designed to help

children study if they’re having to work

at home for example in a noisy kitchen

and that’s that’s free out of that

conference let’s broaden the perspective

a little bit and look at cities we have

urban planners where are the urban sound

planners I don’t know of one in the

world and the opportunity is there to

transform our experience in our cities

the World Health Organization estimates

that

a quarter of Europe’s population is

having its steep degraded by noise in

cities we can do better than that and in

our offices we spend a lot of time at

work where are the office sound planners

people who say don’t sit that team next

to this team because they like noise and

they need quiet or who say don’t spend

all your budget on a huge screen in the

conference room and then place one tiny

microphone in the middle of a table for

30 people if you can hear me you can

understand me without seeing me if you

can see me without hearing me that does

not work so office sound is a huge area

and incidentally noise it offices has

been shown to make people less helpful

let’s enjoy their teamwork and less

productive at work finally we have homes

we use interior designers where are the

interior sound designers hey let’s all

be interior sound designers take on

listening to our rooms and designing

sound that’s effective and appropriate

my friend Richard mizuka an architect in

London coined the phrase invisible

architecture I love that phrase it’s

about designing not appearance but

experience so that we have spaces that

sound as good as they look that a

fit-for-purpose that improve our quality

of life our health and well-being our

social behavior and our productivity

it’s time to start designing for the

ears thank