Strategies for Tunable Indoor Soundscapes

The design of indoor soundscapes often just involves the control of noise in the soundscapes. This noise is transmitted through the walls, floors and ceilings of the soundscape, and is dependent on the transmission coefficient of the materials that make up the building assemblies. With the advent of digital fabrication, it has become possible to manufacture building materials with specific properties that affect performance. Combined with piezoelectric systems, this will allow for a more sophisticated form of noise control for the soundscapes. In addition to noise control, another aspect of indoor soundscapes that is not paid much attention to in the design of the soundscapes is the room acoustics of the soundscapes. The concept of acoustic sculpting has been introduced for the design of auditoriums. What if acoustic sculpting can shape the acoustical environments of indoor soundscapes, enhancing speech perception in the spaces, which is a key performance indicator. It has become possible to create tunable spaces, which are spaces whose acoustical environments can be interactively set. Just as we set the thermal environments of spaces with a thermostat, we would be able to set the acoustical environments of spaces with an aurostat, a similar feedback and control device.