Building acoustics is actually a science that has been explored in depth in only the last 100 years. In 1898 a Harvard physics professor by the name of Wallace Sabine was sought out to improve the atrocious acoustics in the recently constructed Fogg lecture hall. With the use of a pipe organ and a stop watch, Sabine was the first to study the relationship of a building with sound waves.  His work laid the foundation for all future work in this area. Today we have a much more sophisticated understanding of this relationship, but in many respects most design work is still largely based on the intuitive experience of the architect, rather than scientific calculations. Part of the reason is because of the complexity of sound wave transmission. Since sound behaves differently at different frequencies it is difficult to establish rules of thumb or formulas that accommodate the full range of sound that one may encounter. Materials that perform well in high frequency may not perform well in mid to low frequencies, and so the nature of design becomes a process of understanding the nature of sound waves and the way they interact with different types of building materials, shapes, and design configurations. Equipped with that knowledge, an architect is well positioned to design a good sounding space. I would like to begin a discussion on the principals of acoustics that we, as architects, work with on a regular basis. This will be an educational series that will run over the course of many weeks. And my hope is that by the end of this series you will have a basic understanding of how sound operates so that you may understand a particular sound-related problem that you may be encountering within your own facility, and a potential approach to solve that problem.

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