BUILDING SERVICES II, TERM 2

ARCHITECTURAL ACOUSTICS
 UNIT 1:

A Brief History of
Architectural Acoustics
History of Architectural Acoustics
can be traced back to Greek and
Roman open-air theatres, but
there is little evidence that they
gave particular consideration to
acoustical principles when they
selected natural sites for building
open-air theatres.
It is well known that hearing
conditions outdoors are usually
poor, particularly if the audience is
seated on a horizontal surface.
The difficulties in hearing outdoors
are due to:
1) The drop in sound energy when
sound waves travel in the open
air,

2) The considerable sound absorption

created by audience and

3) The interfering noise from various

other sources.
The outdoors listening conditions can
be improved by adding sound
reflecting enclosures around the
source, in the absence of electronics
sound amplification system and by
sloping or raking, the audience area.

See figures below:

The ancient Greeks and Romans
observed these principles and built
their open-air places of assembly,
accordingly. They had the further
advantage that interfering external
noises were practically absent in
their time.
The schematic layout of a Greek
open-air theatre, shown below,
shows the acting area in the middle,
the steeply raked audience portion
surrounding the acting area and a
longitudinal building used for
dressing, storage and as a
background.
Later, the acting area moved to the
front platform, probably to make use
of the sound reflections from behind
this platform and from circular central
floor area, which was always covered
with sound reflective polished marble.
The ruins of Greek open-air theatres
can still be seen in Athens, Epidaurus,
Priene and Delos.
The Romans flattened the circular
orchestra into the semicircle, bringing
the audience even closer to the sound
source, and built large slanting roofs
over the acting area and walls on both
sides of it, resulting in efficient sound
reflection and improvement in
intelligibility.
Theatre at Orange, France, built in A. D. 50, with
seating capacity of 6, 000
The first reference to Architectural
Acoustics in recorded history is
made by Vitruvius, first century B.
C. In his book „De architectura‟, he
describes sounding vases (echeia)
as being used in certain open-air
theatres.
To provide suitably large spaces for
such entertainments as gladiatorial
combats, sports events and chariot
races the Romans built arenas,
which can be described as two
coupled open-air theatres, open
end to open end, surrounding an
elliptical or circular acting area in
the middle.
After the fall of Roman Empire the only
type of auditorium built during middle
ages was the church hall. Since they
inherited only an empirical knowledge
of the acoustics of enclosed spaces,
the acoustical environment of church
halls can be characterized by their
overwhelming fullness of tone,
excessive reverberation and poor
intelligibility.
Another type of auditorium later
used is council room and similar
assembly halls which were used for
Judicial, Legislative, Social and
Commercial purposes, appear after
the eleventh century mainly in Italy
and in Germany.
Around the middle of sixteenth
century, strolling professional
actors in England used the round,
square or octagonal courtyards of
inns as playhouses. Courtyard was
open to sky and was used by
standing spectators. Along the
galleries surrounding the
courtyard, audience occupied
seats on benches.
This creation of intimate relationship
between audience and performers
provided pattern for the design of
several contemporary open stages.
In subsequent centuries, a
remarkable number of theatres were
built, surprisingly with large
capacities.
In seventeenth century, the horse-
shoe shaped opera house was
designed with a large stage area
and stage house, and with rings of
boxes, or tiers, on top of each
other, stacked to the ceiling.
These features provided plenty of
sound absorption in the audience
area and created a short
reverberation time, i. e. a suitable
acoustical environment for the
brisk tempo of Italian opera.
The first „scientific‟ work on room-
acoustical phenomena, Athanasius
Kircher‟s “Phonurgia” appeared in
seventeenth century. It reviews
simple practices of earlier centuries
and can be considered as a
contribution to the historical
development of Architectural
Acoustics.
Around the beginning of
nineteenth century, the German
Ernst F. Friedrich Chladni in his
book „Die Akustic‟ made an
attempt to explain the phenomena
of reverberation. But many a
designer attitude was to use
empirical acoustics principles.
Before the twentieth century, only
one auditorium was acoustically
planned in the sense that some
consideration was given to
acoustical requirements.
In the second half of nineteenth
century the names of Helmholtz,
Bell, Weber and Fechner appeared
as important contributors to
acoustics. Lord Rayleigh published
his classical exposition on” The
Theory of Sound”.
However, it was not until the 20th
century that Prof. W. C. Sabine, of
Harvard University, did his pioneer
work on room acoustical design.
He first devised the coefficient of
sound absorption and arrived at a
simple relation between the
volume of a room, the amount of
sound absorbing material in it and
its reverberation time.
Sabine thus took auditorium
acoustics out of the realm of
guesswork and established it as
a branch of engineering science.
END OF UNIT 1