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