Adoption of Acoustic Window for Public Housing Development in Hong Kong

To meet the ever-increasing demand of public housing in our community in a compact city, the Hong Kong Housing Authority (HA) is committed to develop public housing at any site including "difficult" sites where heavily trafficked roads, industrial/commercial premises, bus terminus and/or railway tracks are in close proximity. To overcome severe noise problems, the HA has been collaborating with the Environmental Protection Department and successfully innovated effective mitigation measures featuring integration with the design of building envelopes/facades, such as acoustic window/balcony in recent years. Embracing a caring attitude to create a healthy living environment to our residents in public housing estates, the HA has endeavoured to tackle traffic noise issue while at the same time maintaining adequate natural ventilation for habitable area under the passive design concept. The acoustic window research process involves three stages, namely, 1) simulation at design stage, 2) on-site verification, and 3) residents' feedback. Stage 1 of the research was presented at the Internoise 2017 Conference. In this paper, the encouraging findings of the remaining stages, i.e. on-site verification and residents' feedback are shared, making reference to two recently completed public housing development projects, namely King Tai Court and Yau Lai Estate.