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T here is – with few exceptions – no sound without a room and no room without a sound. However, what are
the criteria we use when designing rooms? When is a sound experience spatial? There is a great potential in
the design of the auditory. What we hear considerably influences how we perceive visual information.
Consequently, rooms should be consciously designed with sound and for sound. The medium of sound is often a
substitute for visually difficult to transfer information or only serves decorative purposes. One reason for this is that
the effect of sound is massively underrated – although other areas (e.g. film) illustrate the enormous impact of audi-
tory information on other perception levels. We can’t escape the effects of sound – even if we turn away from it.
Architectural concepts are mainly based on sketches, plans and models, which are inappropriate formats for the
design of auditory atmospheres. Without intelligent audio design, however, designers miss out on a major opportu-
nity to address people holistically. Is the absence of auditory design tantamount to silence? Not at all, it only means
that the listening experience is left to chance. We either hear other people or the sounds of the infrastructure, like
the air-conditioning. If silence is required, silence has to be staged. It is about the deliberate design of what we hear.

Can architecture be heard?

In the field of architecture, one does not think of sound right away, although architecture creates the prerequisites
for it. The room and its dimensions, its shape and material properties are strongly perceived via the ears. Only few
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architects, a mong them Peter Zumthor or Steen Eiler Rasmussen , have realised this. Rasmussen asked: “Can archi-
tecture be heard?” Most people would probably answer that architecture does not create sounds and so it cannot be
heard. Acous tics in architecture are mainly restricted to building acoustics, which is about sound insulation towards
the outside and impact sound insulation between rooms. Room acoustics, however, deal with the quality and type
of sound reflection in a room and thus its acoustic properties. Although it has both a design and a functional level,
it is mostly only applied functionally. Acousticians are involved if the acoustic properties of an existing room present
problems. Subsequent acoustic improvements are, however, more expensive and visually unsatisfactory.

Nature leads the way

There is relatively little expertise on the influence of the acoustic quality on the room atmosphere. This manifests in
the restricted and visually oriented vocabulary used to describe acoustic properties. Mostly, people only speak of
rooms with ‘good’ or ‘bad’ acoustics or ‘reverberant’ to ‘dry’ sounds. So what is a spatial sound experience? To under- Fotos: Volker Mai
stand this we have to first of all understand what spaciousness means. Principally, we speak about a spatial sound
experience if one or several sounds have a certain ‘width’ or ‘depth’ in the physical space. A sound experience is not BMW Museum von • by Atelier Brückner mit Klang & Raum
spatial if the sound is punctiform, i.e. if it has no expansion, does not move and is not located in a (strongly percep-
tible) space. A first catego ry of spatial sound experiences was meticulously analysed by sound architect Bernhard
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Leitner . They originate as soon as we hear moving sounds, several sounds simultaneously or at short intervals from
different directions and distan ces. Imagine an idyllic situation on a clearing: we hear the twittering of different birds
above, the gurgle of a creek behind us, a gentle sound of wind in the leaves around us and the chirping of crickets
next to us. A spatial sound experi ence of a se cond category arises when it happens in an architecturally constructed
space. In this case, we hear the sound experience as such as well as its reflections from different directions and with
a time lag. The result is not a sound space consis ting of single points, but a point with a certain spatial expansion.
One example where both phenomena come together is the classic orchestra. A symphony concert is undoubtedly per-
ceived as very spatial experience. In an orchestra, each musician has a certain position in the room and plays a spe-
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cific score on the instrument. The single instruments also vary regarding their radiation characteristics . When the
sounds from different directions, with different tone qualities and degrees of diffusion come together at the human
ear, an exceptionally spatial sound experience appears. When playing the same piece of music on a stereo, the sound
experience is significantly less spatial. This is comparable to a two-di men sional photograph of a space. Today, there
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are various so-called 3D audio technologies like the Wave field synthesis , Dolby Atmos or Auro-3D for an active,
auditory animation of a room. They all portray respectively simulate the to nal spaciousness. The space we thus hear
is a pure projection and is completely separated from the architectural space, where the listener is. This is not sur-
prising because the technologies were developed as standards that can be adapted for any room (e.g. cinemas). The
aim is that in every room and at any place inside the room, people experience exactly the same. The Acousmatic
Room Orchestration System (short AROS) has a different approach. It is individually constituted for the respective
room – one experiences a different perspective of the sound activities at each place inside the room.

Play me the song of space

One can imagine this as some kind of ‘orchestra of loudspeakers’ where each sound comes from a specifically ded- Wenn Design die Materie verlässt von
icated loudspeaker, which are all distributed over the entire room and should preferably be of varying type, just Peter Philippe Weiss mit Gastbeiträgen
as the orchestral instruments. Architecture and thus the acoustic space is principally included in the composition von Hans-Ulrich Werner, Daniel Hug,
– the room turns into an instrument that plays music. The loudspeaker is to the room what the string is to the body Prof. Karmen Franinovic, Trond Maag
of an instrument. With certain frequencies, which exactly correspond to the room proportions, so-called standing und Andres Bosshard, Thomas Kusitzky,
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waves can be generated. Sounds seem to literally hover in the space and interact with it and the visitor. These Ramon De Marco, Ulrich Eller. Erschie -
‘room atmospheres’ can be very subtle, even subliminal so that they are only perceived subconsciously. So the vis- nen als E-Book und Print-Ausgabe bei
itor is never distracted or pestered by sounds. They rather interweave with the architecture, the objects, the light Books on Demand. 184 Seiten. Softcover
and the scenography to form an entity. (register of footnotes on page 152) 34,90 EUR. ISBN 978-3-7347-7241-2

AIT 5.2016 • 139