The Untold Advantages Of Architectural Noise Control

By Author: Kevin Richard
Total Articles: 249
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Can you recover in an ambiance that doesn’t even permit you to sleep properly? How about trying to pay attention in a class where you can hardly hear half of what the lecturer is saying?

Here we will discuss the tangible advantages while considering classroom acoustics as part of the architectural design in some major aspects of life.

In Hospitals

Imagine that you are a physician, communicating to a nurse the ideal amount of medicine to be given to a patient through injection. The ambiance is chaotic with beefing sounds from creaks of passing carts, heart rate monitors, and the boom resonance of unlimited chattering. With this level of distraction in the background, what are the odds of you making an error? In one example, an anesthesiologist misunderstood the instruction of a surgeon to the administrator of a drug by an error of 8000 units due to loud music. While enforcing regulations can stop such blunder, architectural noise control can go a long way in addressing ...
... undesired ambient noise.

Most hospitals have hard ceilings and floors which readily reflect sound sounds, drastically enhancing noise levels in an area full of beeping alarms and equipment. Lessening this issue can be an easy matter of replacing hard tiles with sound absorbing curtains. More endeavors can be put into the architectural design of hospital to lessen noise transmission through the flanking paths or the room walls. By doing this, you can help patients to recovery and rest while reducing the stress levels of the medical staff.

In Schools

Teachers face unlimited amounts of noise throughout their careers, always having to withstand a volume higher than that of students and airborne noise. In rooms with poor classroom acoustics, echo off the walls amplify the slightest whisper of the students and thereby enhancing the noise floor. This leads to an enhanced frequency, which takes away from the main goals of the institution. Students are also not spared. Extremely long echo time in classrooms has led to as much as 50% loss in intelligence according to a single study. This affects the ability for the students to focus and make the most out of their time in school. One research shows that classroom renovation enhanced speech intelligibility and echo time, even meeting standards for integrative schooling of kids with speech impairment. Quality of education can be improved just by taking acoustics into consideration.

Health and well being

Noise from neighbors may be a source of irritation and stress. The exposure to extreme noise to pregnant mothers has been shown to cause high rates of birth defects.

Conclusion

As it is evident, noise absorbing curtains have substantial impacts on our well-being and health. These issues can’t be completely resolved by changing behaviors. Hence, acoustic considerations while designing architecture may play a vital role in enhancing not only our productiveness, but also our life quality and well-being.