Adopting Specially Designed Balconies to Achieve Substantial Noise Reduction for Residential Buildings

Noise from road traffic is a major environmental problem encountered in metropolitan cities including Hong Kong where housing developments would need to be located next to heavily trafficked roads due to scarcity of land supply. Conventional mitigation measures such as building setback, building design, podium and architectural fins would usually be considered but are inadequate for some really difficult sites. Hence, it is necessary to explore innovative mitigation designs for inclusion into housing development designs. Balconies with special designs would be promising in view of the high-rise residential buildings in Hong Kong. This paper outlines a literature review on how balconies can be used for noise mitigation. It also provides some practicable examples in Hong Kong on the use of specially designed balconies for noise mitigation. Noise benefits of these specially designed balconies were estimated or measured. Though the noise benefits may only be applicable to the particular sites and under the particular situations, the examples illustrate that adopting suitable noise insulation strategy or a combination of them in a balcony design could be an effective noise mitigation solution for residential sites abutting heavily trafficked road networks.