20/4/2014

The Search for Silence - NYTimes.com

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THE OPINION PAGES

CONTRIBUTING OP-ED WRITER

The Search for Silence

MARCH 20, 2014

Allison Arieff

There is a brilliant art installation at the Headlands Center for the Arts
in Sausalito, Calif. Its also a working bathroom. The project upends
everything we take for granted about a bathroom something we
assume to be pristine, porcelain, private.
In The Latrine at the Headlands, in what was originally a military
bathroom, several urinals line up like soldiers at attention no stalls
separate them. There are stalls nearby, Richard Serra-like slabs of steel
fabricated by the designers, that amplify sound in a way that would
make any stadium rock band envious. Modesty is unattainable here
you either do your business out in the open or opt for visual privacy and
risk a symphony of sound. Created by the since-disbanded firm Interim
Office of Architecture, the Headlands bathroom deliberately plays with
issues of normal social behavior and noise, otherwise known as
unwanted sound.
Concert halls, cathedrals and art museums are designed with
acoustics in mind. But these tend to be structures we visit were there
for a performance, a sermon or an exhibit and then we leave. Its the

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buildings we inhabit for the longest periods of time that are often sorely
lacking when it comes to acoustics.
Were always taking in what our environment looks like and, as
Vladimir Nabokov wrote Nothing revives the past so completely as a
smell that was once associated with it were also aware of its odors.
But what of its sound? Is there so much noise all around us now that
weve become inured to it?
Joshua Cushner of ARUP, a global engineering firm at the
forefront of acoustic design, might argue yes. Theres a lack of
enlightenment about caring about sound, he says. Sound gives you
information about how someone cared about what they put together,
but this is a visually dominated society and sound is often overlooked
in design.
This should come as no surprise to any of us, especially city
dwellers. We hear the thrum of urban life, overhear the neighbors
arguing next door; we eavesdrop, whether we want to or not, on the
conversations of co-workers. In medical waiting rooms or hospitals,
were often privy to nurses and doctors discussing a patient (or, worse,
as I experienced recently, to the decidedly un-relaxing sounds of
Southern country rock blaring in a mammography clinic). These are
things we often dont want to hear, and with smarter design we
shouldnt have to.
All of ARUPs offices have a resource the Sound Lab that
allows clients to listen to the soundscape of an environment or the
acoustics of a space at the early design stages, before that environment
or space even exists. ARUPs acoustic engineers work with clients to
help them understand what their building or environment will sound
like.
I got to visit one recently, and its an amazing experience. You sit in
the middle of the small, isolated studio and hear design coming from all
directions. We were able to make a comparative acoustic judgment of
say, Carnegie Hall vs. Teatro di Milan (really, really difficult for this
amateur listener) but also hear what station agent announcements
sounded like in a New York subway station (perhaps the very antithesis

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of Carnegie Hall), a project for the M.T.A.

The story behind the train station audio files is one of urban rail
lines most everywhere. Announcements are generated in a station agent
booth that is not well enclosed, so ambient noise from the station is
picked up in the microphone and amplified. The station is loud and the
end result is a poor confluence of a noisy static-y audio signal broadcast
not exactly an ideal situation for transmitting and receiving
important information. So ARUP provided better-enclosed booths and
shielded cable, inherently improving the station acoustics. (Two audio
clips simulate a transition from a normal, difficult-to-hear
announcement to something clear and intelligible.)
Other recent projects include helping a five-star hotel group that
was trying to determine whether the noise reaching guest rooms from a
busy Midtown corner would exceed their guests acceptable threshold
of noise it would have and a project to assess the aural experience
as you proceed from the future PATH station to the World Trade Center
Memorial. Cushner argues that this sort of acoustic modeling at all
scales is essential. Almost no project big or small goes without the
owner getting a 3-D visual model to show what it will look like before it
is built, he says. But no one gets to hear it before it is built. The work
we are doing is to render the outcomes so everyone involved can know
what the result will be. And if they are horrified at what has been
designed, we can help them fix that, too.
A lot of the firms work is happening in health care, where design
solutions are often far simpler and more low-tech (and thus less
expensive) than you might think (and where noise has a measurable
effect on health outcomes). The loudest spikes in noise can be caused by
things as mundane as someone grabbing a paper towel from a
dispenser, opening a trash bag or rolling a cart. Lighting can also be a
factor, says Cushner: Simply dimming the lights in the N.I.C.U. makes
people speak more quietly.
If you care about these things you cant just talk to an architect,
he continues. You have to engage with all the people who run a
hospital. You need to define the sounds that are triggers, the ones that

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create stress rather than promote relaxation.

For all the talk of patient-centered design, its still just an
appendix of great thought, Cushner says, and not yet implemented as
universal best practices, in part because the benefits of better acoustics
can be hard to quantify. And in highly regulated spaces like hospitals or
airports (which these days feel, with their competing broadcast
announcements, safety updates and classic rock, like the worst noise
offenders), in order to change anything significantly you have to get in
the standards side of things, where every paper towel dispenser and
door handle is regulated.
Richard Dallam, an architect and a partner at NBBJ, would agree.
When youre in a hospital room and cant move, the only thing you can
do is hear, he says. Too many days of this and noise begins to work
against the healing process, perhaps requiring medication and creating
a downward spiral. Sound is the No. 1 complaint of those who are
hospitalized, but solving the problem is challenging.
You cant put headphones on a patient, says Dallam.
He and his colleagues, collaborating with a sound artist, have
experimented with essentially bathing patients heads in transparent
sound from nature. You can hear conversation and instruction,
Dallam says, but the sound of nature so absorbs you that your system
focuses on that rather than all the distracting, irritating noises.
Dallams team will be able to measure the efficacy of the proposed
intervention by determining, for example, whether it can lower the
patients blood pressure.
Dallams team is working with two dozen sound samplings from
nature for instance, being in a meadow or by the ocean. User
feedback has already resulted in modifications. For men, he says, the
sound of a babbling brook almost immediately sent them to the mens
room.
But perhaps more important than the choice of running water
versus branches blowing in the wind is the very presence of choice itself.
Says Dallam, One of the things thats taken away from you in a health
care environment is choice you cant control light, noise. This small

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thing gives you some agency.

This is true for workplaces as well, Dallam says, where theres a
tension between prospect (I can survey my landscape for threat) and
refuge (Ive got a place to go when I feel threatened). Sound and noise
in a work environment is a threat, he says. I need a refuge to go to.
With the proliferation of open offices, providing employees with that
place of refuge is ever more important.
ARUP is working on this, too, funding research to investigate
connections between noise and performance in the workplace. Theres
a lot of bad science, says Cushner. And no good controlled
experiments. So were trying to create a structure to convince those
reducing square footage to determine at what point noise actually
matters.
ARUP and NBBJ are proactive about addressing the issue of
acoustic noise. But both Dallam and Cushner are pessimistic about
their colleagues taking it up. I dont think that is on many others
radar, says Dallam. I think its actually gotten worse. People arent
designing acoustic environments, so individuals are taking control by
plugging in and creating their own.
Architects for the most part strive for beauty, says Cushner.
When we bring them into the Sound Lab, theyre forced to experience
what theyve designed for people.
And that just might be the best incentive for change out there.
Allison Arieff is editor and content strategist for the urban planning and policy think tank SPUR.

2014 The New York Times Company

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