Integrating acoustic simulation in architectural design workflows: the FabPod meeting room prototype

Abstract

Sound is an important part of our experience of buildings. However, architects design largely using visually based techniques and largely for visual phenomena. Aiming to address this problem, the research presented in this paper proposes four digital design workflows that integrate acoustic computer simulation into architectural design. These techniques enable architects to design for both visual and acoustic criteria. The goal is to develop rapid and accessible workflows for architects that allow acoustic performance to be tuned as geometry and materials are modified at the scale of the room, and also at the scale of the surface. The discovery and testing of these techniques takes place within the design of the FabPod, a semi-enclosed meeting room situated within an open-plan working environment. The project builds on previous research investigating the design principles, the acoustic performance, and the fabrication methods of hyperboloid surface geometry. Four design workflows were developed: two of these investigate the acoustic performance of the room and use existing acoustic simulation software, and the other two workflows investigate the acoustic performance of the surface and use custom-written scripts to calculate and visualize sound scattering. This paper presents the background to the study, outlines the digital workflows, describes how they integrate acoustic simulation, and shows some of the data produced by these simulations.

Acoustic Performance-Based Design: A Brief Overview of the Opportunities and Limits in Current Practice

“…Different acoustic parameters were taken into account, including reverberation time, sound pressure level, speech transmission index (STI) and the scattering coefficient. The final design consists in a semi-enclosed envelope, which wraps around the meeting area and is composed by an irregular pattern of 180 unique hyperboloid blocks, featuring different acoustic properties [108][109][110][111][112][113]. The temporary project was installed at the Smart Geometry 2010 Workshop and Conference and consists of a curved wall composted of different panel types, which generates different types of acoustic subspaces (Figure 18).…”

“…Different acoustic parameters were taken into account, including reverberation time, sound pressure level, speech transmission index (STI) and the scattering coefficient. The final design consists in a semi-enclosed envelope, which wraps around the meeting area and is composed by an irregular pattern of 180 unique hyperboloid blocks, featuring different acoustic properties[108][109][110][111][112][113].…”

Sustainable Sonic Environments - The Robotic Fabrication of Mass Timber Acoustic Surfaces

“…In the last decade, numerous researchers and designers have explored sound scattering surfaces decade combining computational design with various digital fabrication methods and simulation prediction techniques. The length of this paper does not permit an in-depth review of all previous work in this area; however, some examples of the materials and digital fabrication methods that have been studied include: robotically-controlled nozzle-extruded polyurethane foam (Bonwetsch et al, 2008), plaster powder 3D printing (Peters, 2009;Peters and Olesen, 2009), thermo-formed panels combined with 5-axis CNC milling of MDF structural cells (Peters et al, 2013), robot-controlled folding and welding of a plastic (Vomhof et al, 2014), 3D-printing and laser-cutting (Turco et al, 2017), and robotically-controlled hot-wire foam cutting (Reinhardt et al, 2017;Walker and Foged, 2018). A notable built project that has merged acoustic performance and digital fabrication is the Elbephilharmonie Hamburg by architects Herzog and DeMeuron, which included 6000 m2 of sound scattering CNC-milled gypsum panels (Koren, 2018).…”

The acoustic designer: Joining soundscape and architectural acoustics in architectural design education

“…This tool has been employed for the design of acoustically optimised meeting rooms, as shown by Peters, based at the Architecture faculty in Toronto. 58,59 Another example is Aeolus, a computational design tool used to support the acoustic design of a classical music stage shell (ReS), built every year during an architecture and music workshop. 60 This practice-based experience aims at engaging student architects in the realisation of a functional acoustic design, while teaching them the rationale behind design choices (Villa Pennisi in Musica).…”