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Improving auditorium designs with rapid feedback by integrating parametric

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DOI: 10.1007/s12273-015-0268-x

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BUILD SIMUL (2016) 9: 235–250
DOI 10.1007/s12273-015-0268-x

Improving auditorium designs with rapid feedback by integrating

parametric models and acoustic simulation

Research Article
Shuai Lu1 (), Xiang Yan1,2, Weiguo Xu1,2, Yuxiao Chen1, Jie Liu1

1. School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

2. Key Laboratory of Urban-Rural Eco Planning and Green Building, Ministry of Education, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

Abstract Keywords
Auditoriums require both acoustic performance and aesthetic values, while the efficiency of their auditorium design,
current design process should be improved for architects to better realize these two goals. This room acoustics,
paper first proposes a new design process for auditoriums by integrating parametric models and parametric models,
acoustic simulation, aiming to provide architects with rapid architectural and acoustic feedback. acoustic simulation,
The new process is then implemented by: (1) programming a parametric model of auditoriums in rapid feedback
Rhinoceros using Component-Based Method, which can generate more varied designs and better
suit architects’ design practice than existing methods; (2) developing an interface connecting
Article History
Received: 15 September 2015
Rhinoceros and CATT, which adds acoustic simulation functionality on its input, manipulation and
Revised: 23 November 2015
output to facilitate architects’ utilization in auditorium designs. Finally, a demonstration is
Accepted: 25 November 2015
conducted to verify the effectiveness of the new design process as well as the functionality of
rapid feedback in its current implementation.
© Tsinghua University Press and
Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
2015

1 Introduction With digital technologies more and more widely involved

1.1 Research background
An auditorium is a container of performing arts, and
frequently also serves as a landmark of a city or even of a
in the architectural design process (Burry 2011; Szalapaj
2005), several researches that aimed to improve auditorium
designs using digital design methods have been conducted.
For example, Robinson et al. (2014), Monks et al. (2000),
Saksela et al. (2015), Spaeth and Menges (2010), Bassuet

Building Thermal, Lighting,

state. Therefore, an auditorium should not only provide et al. (2014), and Foged et al. (2012) tried to optimize form

and Acoustics Modeling

perfect acoustic environment for performances, but also
express aesthetic values by its form and space. In practice,
however, neither of these two virtues can be easily achieved,
because: (1) it takes architects a lot of time and efforts to
turn their ideas into designs, due to the complexity of
auditoriums; (2) any design by architects needs to be tested
by acousticians and the feedback loop causes delay and
discontinuity; (3) architects and acousticians have divergent
ways of thinking and value judgments (Apfel 1992; Beranek
1979, 2004, 2011). All these factors could affect the efficiency
and thinking continuity of architects in the design process
and thus reduce the possibility of novel and acoustically
appreciated designs to be achieved.
E-mail: lyu_shuai@qq.com
designs and material placements of auditoriums by using
acoustic performance as the driving factor; Siltanen et al.
(2008), Dritsas and Rafailaki (2007), Kouzeleas and Semidor
(2002), and Mahalingam (1999) proposed geometry reduction
methods and simplified simulation algorithms to perform
faster acoustic tests for architects; meanwhile, Mahalingam
(2003, 1998), Peters (2010), and Xu (2011a) raised methods
to generate auditorium designs automatically by computer
and thus reduce architects’ work burden. Among these
existing studies, the relationships between the proposed new
methods or algorithms and the design process of auditoriums
are not fully explored. These tools may also benefit from
improvements, for example, the designs that computers
236
can generate could be more varied and reliable, and the
simulation tools could be more friendly to architects who
are unfamiliar with acoustics (more details in Sections 1.2
and 1.3). This paper explores the possibility and imple-
mentation of a new design process of auditoriums, which
integrates two digital methods, parametric models and
acoustic simulation. This process aims to provide rapid
feedback on architectural design and acoustic performance
for architects, thereby helping them pursue better auditorium
designs.
1.2 Parametric model
The parametric model is a widely used digital design
method and its idea is to model buildings by defining their
essential characters and rules using computer language,
instead of describing the information of actual geometries
or components (Janssen 2004; Xu 2011b). When architects
change parameters or input modification commands,
parametric models can automatically provide them with a
family of designs that vary significantly while all meet the
basic requirements in a short time. As a result, architects’ time
and efforts spent in accomplishing or modifying designs
can be largely reduced, thus they can attempt more design
possibilities and increase the chance of acquiring satisfactory
designs.
Although parametric models have reasonable theories and
successful application examples on other types of buildings,
to build a sufficient parametric model of auditoriums is
very difficult. This is because that auditoriums are complex
systems that have many components correlated with each
other and are constrained by functional requirements of
Fig. 1 A parametric model of vineyard concert hall by integrating polyhedrons
Lu et al. / Building Simulation / Vol. 9, No. 3
sightlines, circulations, etc. Some existing attempts have
already shown the difficulties. For example, a parametric
model of vineyard concert hall was built by integrating
polyhedrons of different shapes as shown in Fig. 1 (Spaeth
and Menges 2010), but a large proportion of designs
generated by it is invalid, because this parametric model
only covers shape characteristics of auditoriums and omits
others. Another example is a parametric model of horse-
shoe opera house, which was created by defining the topology
of the building as shown in Fig. 2 (Xu 2011a), and the
problem of this parametric model is that it can only generate
very similar designs, because the topology is completely fixed
and only simple modifications like changing dimensions
are possible.
1.3 Acoustic simulation
The acoustic simulation itself is a mature technology with
several commercial software packages available that could
predict acoustic parameters of auditoriums with deviations
smaller than twice of the subjective limens (Vorländer 1995;
Bork 2005a,b). However, existing commercial software as
well as simplified algorithms are designed for acousticians
rather than for acoustically unschooled architects, because:
(1) they need very detailed information about forms and
materials, while architects can only provide form information,
and even form information needs format conversions;
(2) the manipulation process is complicated itself, while it
needs to be redone at every design modification; (3) simulation
results contain large amounts of data that shows the values
of different acoustic parameters, which makes it difficult for
architects to understand the overall acoustic performance
Lu et al. / Building Simulation / Vol. 9, No. 3
Fig. 2 A parametric model of horse-shoe opera house by defining
the topology
and make design decisions. Due to these aspects, acoustic
simulation at the current state cannot be easily utilized by
architects in auditorium designs. Some researchers have
attempted to solve this problem, for example, a plug-in of
SketchUp (a widely used 3D modelling software) called
SU2CATT that can export SketchUp models to CATT
(a widely used room acoustic simulation software) has been
developed in order to provide assistance to architects with
acoustic simulation (Pehle and Marek 2013). However, this
plug-in only solves the problem of format conversions while
other problems including input, manipulation and output
still exist.
1.4 Objective of this research
This research tries to integrate parametric models and
acoustic simulation into the design process of auditoriums
to provide architects with rapid architectural and acoustic
feedbacks, and specifically pursues three goals: (1) to raise
a new design process of auditoriums considering the
deficiencies of current process; (2) to implement the new
design process by developing tools and interfaces; (3) to
verify the effectiveness of the new design process and its
current implementation by application.
2 Design process
2.1 Current design process of auditoriums
The widely-used Bruce Arche Model (Lawson 2005) is
employed here as a reference for analyzing the design
process of auditoriums, which indicates that architectural
design is a continuous trial-and-error loop of analysis,
synthesizing and testing until a desirable design result is
acquired, and subjective ideas of architects are the motivator
of this loop (Fig. 3).
The current workflow of auditorium design is rather
similar (Fig. 4); however, it has two significant deficiencies:
(1) architects need to do much more work to modifying an
237
Fig. 3 Design process of Bruce Arche Model
Fig. 4 Current workflow of auditorium design
auditorium design than other types of buildings, because a
minor modification may lead to large changes of the whole
design due to the tight interrelations of components and
the strict functional requirements of auditoriums (i in Fig. 4).
This not only affects the continuity of architects’ design
thinking, but also takes up the time and efforts of architects
that should be spent on developing novel design ideas. As a
result, the possibility of achieving desirable designs is largely
reduced. (2) Architects need acousticians to test the design
and provide suggestions for further modifications because
auditoriums have critical requirements of acoustics (ii in
Fig. 4). However, this feedback loop is difficult to be timely
in reality, because different groups of people are involved
and a lot of information needs to be transferred between
them. Furthermore, as Leo Beranek indicated, architects want
auditoriums to be unique and inspiring, while acousticians
tend to learn from highly successful halls (Beranek 2011),
thus conflicts are likely to occur. In some cases, architects
are the dominating side (as with most auditorium designs
in China), then the design results often have some acoustic
defects that are difficult to be fully remedied by acousticians
in the late design stage when major architectural design is
completed; while in other cases, acousticians are the leading
side (as with many famous auditoriums in the world), then
the design results often share similar features due to pre-
ferences of the acousticians, while novel ideas of architects
are often abandoned regretfully (Cheng 2013).
In summary, the current design process of auditoriums
is not a timely feedback loop, which means that when
architects come up with a design idea, they cannot
immediately acquire the design nor test the design acoustically.
Improvements will be helpful for architects to pursue
better auditorium designs.
238
2.2 Proposed design process of auditoriums
Parametric models and acoustic simulation could be capable
to improve these two deficiencies of the current design
process of auditoriums. Parametric models could provide
architectural feedback, which means that once architects
have a design idea, the design they want can be automatically
generated by a computer very quickly, thus the time spent
on accomplishing or modifying designs is reduced and
architects can have more attempts following continuous
design thinking. Acoustic simulation with proper supplements
for architects could provide acoustic feedback, which means
that once architects are satisfied by the design, they can
employ acoustic simulation for a primary acoustic judgment
and then they can continue to design according to the
judgment instantly.
Taking parametric models and acoustic simulation into
account, theoretically the design process of auditoriums
could be optimized to a three-party activity: architects,
acousticians, and computers (Fig. 5). For most of the time
architects can work with the computer. They can convey
their design ideas by drawing drafts, changing parameters or
inputting modification commands, and then the parametric
model can synthesize this information and provide the
design they want very quickly. Then the architects just need
to evaluate whether the design provided by the computer
is satisfactory or not, and proceed to send the design to
simulation or modify their design idea accordingly. The
simulation part is employed to test the design acoustically.
Even though not perfectly precise, its quick judgment can
help architects make more reasonable design decisions:
when the acoustic judgment is undesirable, architects can
immediately start to rethink their design idea; otherwise
the acousticians should take over the work and verify the
acoustic quality of the design more carefully, because there
might be some issues that cannot be fully recognized by
architects. If the acousticians think there is still some potential
to improve the acoustic performance, they can provide
architects with suggestions for further design modifications.
Fig. 5 Proposed design process involving parametric model and
acoustic simulation
Lu et al. / Building Simulation / Vol. 9, No. 3
In this new design process, architects can be more
concentrated on the creative part of designs and have more
time to test novel ideas, thus outstanding designs are more
likely to be achieved. For acousticians, it needs to be
emphasized that their importance is not reduced at all.
Now they are released from constantly testing different
designs superficially, and can focus on pre-selected ones by
computers to make more detailed examinations and provide
more specific suggestions.
Although the new design process is promising, there
are critical difficulties in implementing it, because to build
a sufficient parametric model of auditoriums is very hard
and acoustic simulation software has to be adjusted and
improved properly to suit architects’ demands (as indicated
in Sections 1.2, 1.3). Here we try to overcome these difficulties
and implement the new design process by developing a
software package, which includes a parametric model of
concert halls based on Rhinoceros, and an acoustic simulation
interface for architects bridging Rhinoceros and CATT.
3 Implementation
3.1 Parametric model
1. Methodology
As indicated in Section 1.2, researchers have attempted to
build parametric models of auditoriums by integrating unit
elements (Spaeth and Menges 2010) or describing the
topology (Xu 2011a); however, these methods could lead to
deficiencies including generating a large number of invalid
designs or restraining design possibilities. Herein a new
methodology to build parametric model is raised, which
is called Component-Based Method. A significant feature
of auditoriums is that they have several fixed types of
components (e.g. wall, stage, aisle, ceiling) and the types of
components will not change for most design possibilities
of a certain type of auditoriums. Moreover, there are
definitive inter-connections and constrains between every
two components in one type or in different types (e.g. every
two adjacent walls need to be continuous; every door needs
to locate on a wall and at the end of an aisle, every seat
needs to have proper altitude according to the position of
the stage and other seats to ensure good sightline), and these
inter-connections and constrains could be used to define the
essential characters and rules of a certain type of auditoriums.
Therefore, we might be able to build a parametric model of
auditoriums by defining the types of components and the
inter-connections and constrains between the components.
This is the Component-Based Method.
The Component-Based Method can be seen as an extension
of the Object-Oriented Method in programming (Booch and
Lu et al. / Building Simulation / Vol. 9, No. 3
Maksimchuk 2007; Ambler 2001). The concept Component
in Component-Based Method corresponds to the concept
Object in Object-Oriented Method, Type of Components
corresponds to Class, while Inter-Connection and Constrain
corresponds to Attribute, Method and Event.
2. Programming
Following this method, a parametric model of shoe-box
concert halls (the reference auditorium is the Boston
Symphony Hall) has been programmed based on Rhinoceros
(V.5 SR2) with its development kit, Rhino Python Editor,
following several steps (Fig. 6):
a) Defining Types of Components. Here we selected six
types of components, which are wall, stage, door, aisle,
balcony and seat. Each type has its own attributes, methods
and events. Ceiling is not included here because for
shoe-box concert halls it can be determined by walls.
b) Defining Inter-Connections and Constrains, which here
refer to the dependencies of different components, or how
other components should react when one component is
modified. For example, if one wall is moved, adjacent
Fig. 6 Modules of the parametric model using Component-Based Method
239
walls of it should rotate and scale in order to keep the
walls’ continuity; doors on it should move in order
to remain on the wall, etc. By defining these inter-
connections and constrains that include all possible
dependencies of two components, the essential characters
and rules of shoe-box concert halls are sketched out.
c) Defining Initialization, which is how the initial design is
generated. Architects can draw their drafts in Rhinoceros,
and a corresponding design of shoe-box concert hall can
be generated automatically as the initial design for further
modifications.
d) Defining Response Mechanism. When one component is
modified by architects, other components have to react
not only following the preset inter-connections and
constrains in step (b), but also in proper orders, so that a
new design can be generated without any error. Therefore
we need to define a Response Mechanism to control this
process. Here a “chain reaction” prototype is employed
(Fig. 7). The component modified by architects is the
stimulator of the chain reaction (Wall 1 in Fig. 7), and it
will inform its related components to change (Walls
240
Fig. 7 “Chain reaction” of the parametric model
2&4, Stage 1, Doors 1&2, Balcony 1, Chair 1 in Fig. 7). After
these components finish changing, they will also inform
their related components to change. As a result, this “chain
reaction” process will continue until no more components
need to change, and this is the time when a new design
is generated (more details available in Appendix A).
e) Defining User Interface, which will be introduced later in
this section.
After these programming processes, a parametric model of
shoe-box concert halls is achieved, and it has the following
features:
a) This parametric model can generate a large variety of
designs, which are all valid and meet the basic principles
of auditoriums, thus architects’ design ideas can be
turned into designs simply by drawing different drafts
or modifying different components. Specifically, any
concert hall that has vertical walls and no curvy com-
ponents (standard shoe-box, wedged-shape, center-stage,
etc.) can be generated by the parametric model (Fig. 8,
the ceiling is hidden for visual clarity), and this gives
designers much more design freedom and possibilities
than the existing ones.
b) Every component of this parametric model can be modified
directly, which means that architects can modify the
design by rotating a wall, moving a door or editing stage
shape, while in the existing parametric models only
changing parameters (length, width, height, etc.) and
editing control lines are available. Therefore, the new
parametric model is more compatible with architects’
design custom and can be used more efficiently.
Lu et al. / Building Simulation / Vol. 9, No. 3
3. Manipulation process and user interface
Besides the core part of the parametric model, we also design
the manipulation process and the user interface carefully to
allow architects to communicate with computers easily,
because this is very important to realize the rapid feedback
loop. The current manipulation process and interface are
designed as follows (Fig. 9):
a) Input drafts. Drafts are the start of designs and express
architects original ideas. Here architects can draw the
draft of an auditorium in their own way using commands
in Rhinoceros (including Line, Polyline, Curve, etc.) and
the only requirement is that they put the drafts into
right layers (as different colors indicated in Fig. 9(a)).
Naturally, it could be better for architects if they are able
to draw the drafts in a more intuitive way (e.g., drawing
on a sketch broad with pencils and then the sketch being
recognized by computer), but this could affect the
robustness of draft recognition, so is not included here
yet (Wei et al. 2012).
b) Drafts recognition. Once architects start the program we
developed, the draft drawn by them will be recognized
automatically and be converted into the information
that the parametric model needs to generate a design.
c) Choosing type. Architects can input information to the
computer on the required type of auditoriums by simply
click one button. At the current stage only shoe-box
concert hall is available (Fig. 9(b)).
d) Input parameters. There are several architectural parameters
that cannot be expressed by drafts, thus architects need
to input them in a window (Fig. 9(c)).
Lu et al. / Building Simulation / Vol. 9, No. 3
Fig. 8 Designs that can be generated by the parametric model (star indicates changed component)
Fig. 9 Manipulation process and user interface
e) Generating design. After finishing these steps above, the
computer can generate the design automatically at a fast
speed (Fig. 9(d)).
f) Modifying design. After the design is generated, architects
can judge whether it is satisfactory. If not, architects can
modify the design by directly adjusting component(s)
following the instructions shown in the command
line of Rhinoceros, and new designs can be generated
automatically. This process can be repeated several times
until satisfactory design is achieved.
g) Acoustic testing. Once a satisfactory design is achieved,
architects can test its acoustic performance by launching
the acoustic simulation, which will be introduced next
in Section 3.2.
241
3.2 Acoustic simulation interface
As indicated in Section 1.3, existing acoustic simulation
software can provide reliable predictions but it is not suitable
for architects in three aspects: input, manipulation and
output. Here we developed an interface that can call acoustic
simulation software for architects in order to improve these
three issues above and integrate acoustic simulation into
the design process more smoothly. The interface is also
developed in Rhinoceros (V.5 SR2) with Rhino Python Editor
so that simulations can be done once architects accomplish
a design in Rhinoceros, and the acoustic simulation software
employed here is CATT (V9.0b). The interface contains three
parts.
1. Input for acoustic simulation
To do acoustic simulation, information about forms, source,
receivers and materials is needed. The information of the
former three is automatically extracted by the interface
from the design in Rhinoceros, while for the latter one it is
more complicated and needs additional input of architects.
For form information, the interface can automatically
convert all geometries of a design into planar surfaces, and
then read the coordinates of the vertices of each surface, and
finally write the information of coordinates and surfaces
in a .txt file following CATT requirements. Thus the form
information can be used by CATT later. For source
information, the interface extracts two points as the source
positions: one is the center point of the stage, and another
one is the two-thirds point between the center point and
the farthest vertex of the stage. The sources are set to be
omni-directional and 1 m above the stage. For receiver
information, the interface picks up a seat every six rows
and every twelve columns in the audience area (including
242 Lu et al. / Building Simulation / Vol. 9, No. 3

balconies) as a receiver, so that the receivers cover all over

the audience area evenly. The head directions of all receivers
are facing the source (Fig. 10). All processes described above
are automatically done in the background once architects
have a design in Rhinoceros and launch the interface.
Material information cannot be acquired from the design
of architects, therefore extra input is unavoidable. Considering
that architects are more familiar with materials than acoustic
terms (absorption coefficients or scattering coefficients), the
interface here allows architects to choose a material from a
material list (Appendix B.1) for each kind of components
according to their interior design preferences instead of
inputting acoustic parameters. Moreover, considering that
architects might want to learn from the interior design of
an existing auditorium that shares similar form characters
Fig. 10 Distribution of the sources (green) and receivers (red)
with the new design, architects are also allowed to select an
existing successful auditorium from a list (Appendix B.2)
and then its material information will be automatically
applied to the new design. After that, architects can still
modify the material selections (Figs. 11, 12). Note that both
of these two methods here can only provide estimated
material information, because acoustic attributes for the
same material can also vary with different construction
details, so the prediction results here are only valid for
architects to have a rough understanding of the acoustic
performance of their designs, and further verifications by
acousticians are still necessary if architects want to make
final design decisions.

2. Automatic manipulation of acoustic simulation software

The manipulation process of CATT is complicated and needs

several manual operations, which could cost architects much
time and increase the delays of feedback, because architects Fig. 11 User interface to input material information (select materials
for each kind of components or select an auditorium)
need to repeat the operations every time when they have a
new design. Furthermore, there are several key simulation
parameters that need to be input including the number of
rays and the echogram length, while improper or inconstant
parameter settings can cause incorrect results. Therefore,
we need to automate the manipulation of CATT and
standardize the settings.
In practice, the interface can manipulate CATT to run
an acoustic simulation without any manual operations of
architects (more details available in Appendix B.3), and the
simulation parameters are fixed as the recommended
settings for a quick test (10 000 rays and 2000 ms echogram)
Fig. 12 Material placements for acoustic simulation (ceiling is
(Dalenbäck 2012). Once a simulation is finished, the result hidden for visual clearance)
data is automatically exported as a .txt file for post pro-
cessing. For more reliable evaluations, two simulations with 3. Post processing of output data
different sources (as selected in the part “Input for acoustic
simulation” above) will be conducted for one design, and CATT provides the prediction results of every test point on
the results of these two simulations will be post-processed all octave bands for more than 20 acoustic parameters, and
together. this output is too massive for architects to have an overall
Lu et al. / Building Simulation / Vol. 9, No. 3 243

understanding of the acoustic performance of the design. recommended ranges for architects according to the
Therefore, the data needs to be simplified and visualized in requirements of a certain project.
order to be more helpful for architects to make design Finally, the simplification and visualization of results. In
decisions. order to help architects interpret the results better, a radar
First, the number of acoustic parameters needs to be chart and a distribution map are provided for each design
reduced for more convenient design decisions. The retained (Fig. 15). The radar chart shows the mean values (red line)
parameters need to be able to reflect the overall acoustic
performance of designs, while parameters that are dependent
on others or are not related to form designs should be
omitted. Note that different kinds of auditoriums can have
divergent selections of acoustic parameters because the
acoustic requirements are different. Here we take concert hall
as an example in order to keep consistent with the parametric
model we developed in Section 3.1. Beranek (2004) has
summarized the parameters that are important for concert
halls, including Reverberation Time (RT), Early Decay Time
(EDT), Binaural Quality Index (BQI), Strength of the Sound
(G), Bass Ratio (BR), Initial-Time-Delay Gap (ITDG), Lateral
Fraction (LF), Surface Diffusivity Index (SDI) and Clarity
(C80). Among these parameters, BQI and LF are highly
correlated with each other while BQI is more stable for
simulation (Bork 2005a,b), thus only BQI is included here.
Fig. 14 Modification interface of recommended ranges
BR and SDI are entirely determined by detailed acoustic
designs by acousticians and have little relationship with
form designs by architects, which are thus excluded here.
As a result, we reduce the number of acoustic parameters
to six for concert halls: RT, EDT, BQI, G, ITDG, C80, and
they respectively represent the fullness of tone, the sequence
of early sound, spaciousness, loudness, intimacy and clarity.
Therefore, they can reflect the overall acoustic performance
of concert hall designs effectively.
Second, the recommended ranges for each acoustic
parameter need to be determined to provide architects
with reliable references for judgments. Here we use the
recommended ranges suggested by Beranek (2004) for
typical symphonic concert halls with more than 1400 seats
(Fig. 13). Considering that even auditoriums of the same
type could have different acoustic requirements due to
differences in performances, sizes, client preferences, etc.,
modifying the recommended ranges is also possible in this
interface (Fig. 14), thus acousticians can set the specific

Parameter Condition Range

RT (s) Av. 500 Hz and 1 kHz 1.8 to 2.1
EDT (s) Av. 500 Hz and 1 kHz 2.2 to 2.6
BQI 0.65 to 0.71
G (dB) Av. 500 Hz and 1 kHz 1.5 to 5.5
ITDG (ms) 0 to 25
C80 (dB) Av. 500 Hz, 1 kHz, and 2 kHz −3 to 0
Fig. 15 The radar chart and the distribution map that show
Fig. 13 Recommended ranges used in this research architects the simulation results
244
and standard deviations (pink shadow) of all test points in
two simulations for every acoustic parameter, respectively
representing the average and uniformity of the acoustic
performance of a design. It also shows the acoustic parameters
of the acoustically “worst point” (yellow line), in order to
warn architects about potential extremely poor conditions.
The green shadow in the radar chart shows the recommended
ranges as a reference for architects to judge the acoustic
quality of the current design. The distribution map, on the
other hand, shows the acoustic qualities of different positions
within the auditorium by colors of balls. Greener color
indicates better acoustic qualities of a certain position, while
redder color indicates worse acoustic qualities. The position
of the “worst point” is also shown in the distribution map
by the biggest ball (more details available in Appendix B.4).
By the help of the radar chart and the distribution map,
architects can have a general understanding of the acoustic
Fig. 16 Demonstration results
Lu et al. / Building Simulation / Vol. 9, No. 3
qualities of a particular design and then make design decisions
accordingly.
4 Verification
The new design process of auditoriums raised in Section 2
has been implemented in Section 3, and this part mainly
aims to verify their effectiveness, especially the functionality
of rapid feedback. Because the software we developed is not
mature enough to be used by architects in actual projects,
instead we chose a typical shoe-box auditorium (imitating
the Boston Symphony Hall) as a demonstration and attempted
some design modifications on it in order to test: (1) whether
the software can perform as expected; (2) how long does the
software need to provide architectural and acoustic feedback.
The demonstrating results are shown in Fig. 16. The
results are drawn from a common computer (CPU: i7-3720;
Lu et al. / Building Simulation / Vol. 9, No. 3
Memory: 8 GB; Graphic: GT650; System: Win7-64ibt) and
could change in other situations. In all of these six cases,
the software performs as expected with no bugs, thus its
reliability can be proved primarily. The calculation time of
parametric model (the time delay of architectural feedback)
is approximately 10 s, which is very short and means that
architects can see the design result almost immediately after
they have a design idea. The calculation time of acoustic
simulation is much longer, and makes the delay of acoustic
feedback to be about 12–15 minutes. Although it is already
much better than the current design workflow, in which
negotiations of architects and acousticians usually take several
days, the delays of acoustic feedback could be further reduced
to enhance its functionality of rapid feedback.
5 Discussion
5.1 Methods to reduce the delays of acoustic feedback
As indicated in Section 4, the delays of acoustic feedback
are not short enough and should be further reduced. Two
possible ways are discussed here: reducing number of rays
and simplifying geometries.
For simulation software using geometrical acoustic
methods, reducing the number of rays can make the
simulation faster, but too few rays could affect the precision
of simulation results (Rindel 2000). In this research, where
both precision and speed are treasured, the proper number
of rays should be a balance of these two factors.
In order to explore this issue, 5 cases with the same
scenario (as same as the first case in Section 4) but different
numbers of rays are conducted for comparison. The simulation
results are shown in Fig. 17. In terms of precision, it can be
seen that the mean values and standard deviations of Cases
1–4 are very similar, while Case 5 shows larger standard
deviations. The acoustic spatial distributions of Cases 1–3
are similar and all indicate that the back parts of the main
audience areas are the relatively poor parts, while Case 4
and Case 5 are not consistent with Cases 1–3 and show that
the side parts of the first balconies are the poor parts. The
acoustic parameters and positions of the “worst point” are
the most unstable results and are different in every case,
while Cases 1–3 show similar positions (in the back parts of
the main audience areas). In terms of time, it can be seen
that the time reduces significantly with the number of rays
in Cases 1–3, but for Case 4 and Case 5, the time reduction
is very limited. Considering both precision and speed,
10 000 rays (Case 3) can be regarded as the best choice
based on these 5 cases, while further reducing the number
of rays can affect the precision and is not effective to
shorten the time delays. This could also be part of the
reasons that using 10 000 rays is recommended for a quick
245
test in the manual of CATT (Dalenbäck 2012). In other
words, reducing the delays of acoustic feedback by using
fewer rays seems to be not very promising. Note that this
conclusion is valid only when using similar computers,
while the proper number of rays as well as the delays of
acoustic feedback could change when different hardware is
employed.
To simplify geometries is another possible way to reduce
the delays of acoustic feedback, and it has been widely used
by acousticians to make quick acoustic tests. Although it is
not difficult for experienced acousticians to do geometry
reduction properly, to automate this process is of technical
difficulties, because the simplified geometric models have
to retain acoustically important information. As a result,
simplifying geometries is not yet included in this research,
but will be explored in the future based on some existing
successful researches (Siltanen et al. 2008; Andujar and
Brunet 1999; Andujar et al. 2002).
5.2 Limitation of the current acoustic evaluations
The current acoustic evaluation system only includes objective
parameters that are widely used and have well-recognized
recommended ranges, because these quantitative parameters
can be easily judged by architects (e.g., by comparing the
parameters of designs and the recommended ranges) and
are not likely to be misleading. These objective parameters
are effective to reflect major aspects of the acoustic per-
formance of concert hall designs; however, it has to be
admitted that there are still some important acoustic features
which cannot be captured by any of the existing room
acoustic parameters. For example, the temporal envelope of
early reflections and the distribution uniformity of sound
energy are important in concert halls (Lokki et al. 2011), but
there are no quantitative parameters and recommended
ranges that have been proved to be able to reflect these
characteristics sufficiently. If these characteristics are included
in the acoustic evaluation system, they could be difficult for
architects to make judgments, or could mislead architects
to abandon acoustically acceptable designs, thus they are
decided to be excluded at the current stage. Although this
could lead to the possibilities that designs with acoustic
defects might be accepted by architects, these unsatisfactory
designs can be recognized by acousticians, since every
design approved by architects has to be further verified by
acousticians as indicated in Section 2.2. Therefore, this
situation is considered to be better than misleading architects
to abandon promising designs.
There have been some researches trying to quantify these
characteristics that cannot be captured by existing room
acoustic parameters, for example, using the autocorrelation
function to represent the distribution uniformity of sound
246 Lu et al. / Building Simulation / Vol. 9, No. 3

Fig. 17 Simulation results using different numbers of rays (*the time between CATT is launched and closed in the first simulation; † the
time between CATT is launched in the first simulation and the result graphs are shown)

energy (Robinson et al. 2014). The acoustic evaluation system
here could be more comprehensive if these promising
methods are included. However, these attempts need to be
considered very carefully to avoid potential misleading.
Even if new acoustic indices are successfully added in the
evaluation system, verifications of acousticians are still
indispensable, because room acoustics is still be regarded as
a mixture of art and science at the current stage (Robinson
et al. 2014).
5.3 Role of computers in the proposed design process
In the proposed design process of this research, the role of
computers is generally regarded as design support medium,
which means that computers are employed to eliminate
previously human activities with less cost and higher quality,
and assist designers in areas where they do not have sufficient
knowledge or competence themselves (Janssen 2004). However,
Design ideas and major design decisions are still determined
Lu et al. / Building Simulation / Vol. 9, No. 3
by designers. In the proposed design process, for example,
parametric models are employed to save the time and efforts
of architects that are spent on accomplishing or modifying
designs, but the core ideas of designs are still mainly
determined by architects through drafts or modification
commands. Acoustic simulation here can help architects
assess the acoustic qualities of designs, but whether to accept
the design, as well as how to modify the design, are still
decided by architects. To let computers serve as design
support medium in this research is based on the understanding
that the designs of auditoriums pursue not only technical
issues but also cultural and aesthetic values, which are very
hard to be assisted by computers but mostly depend on
architects. In the early design stage, these cultural and
aesthetic values could even be more important as long
as technical performances are acceptable, because major
characteristics of forms and spaces are mostly determined
in this stage. Therefore, this research tends to provide
architects with the maximum design freedom and the
employment of computers here aims to save architects’
time and efforts as well as test technical performances (here
is mainly acoustics). In this way, architects can have more
chances to conceive and test novel design ideas, while
without the help of computers, time limitation would usually
be a problem for architects when trying different ideas.
Therefore, designs with both good technical performances
and desirable cultural and aesthetic values are more likely
to be achieved with the help of computers, even though
computers serve only as design support medium and provide
no direct modification suggestions.
Although using computers as design support medium is
effective in the design process, it could also be criticized
for not being ambitious enough or not providing direct
design advices actively. Certainly computers could be more
helpful for architects if proper modification suggestions can
be provided, as long as the freedom of architects is still
maintained. One possible way of realizing this is to integrate
design optimizations into the design process, which aims to
automatically find the design with best performances for
architects. The method of design optimizations has been
proved to be promising by several existing researches,
including optimizing the section profile of concert halls
by using the distribution uniformity of sound energy as
the goal (Robinson et al. 2014), optimizing the absorption
placements of a classroom by using speech intelligibility as
the goal (Saksela et al. 2015), etc. This possibility of integrating
design optimizations into the proposed design process will
be explored in the near future considering existing successful
researches.
247
6 Conclusions
Herein, a new auditorium design process involving parametric
models and acoustic simulation is proposed, implemented and
verified. Several conclusions can be drawn from this research:
1) Parametric models and acoustic simulation can be
integrated into auditorium designs to help architects
pursue better designs by providing rapid architectural
and acoustic feedback.
2) Component-Based Method is an efficient approach to
develop parametric models of auditoriums, which can
reliably provide architects with more varied and valid
designs than existing methods, thus fulfilling the demand
of architectural feedback. The feedback delays can be as
short as 10 s when based on Rhinoceros using a common
computer.
3) Acoustic simulation software with supplements on its
input, manipulation and output can provide architects
with overall understandings of acoustic performance
as effective support for design decisions, thus fulfills
the demand of acoustic feedback. The current feedback
delays are about 12–15 min when based on CATT using
a common computer, which are much faster than the
current design workflow but still have potential to be
further reduced.
4) The present implementation is reliable and has good rapid
feedback abilities, thus primarily verified the effectiveness
of the proposed design process. Further attempts including
reducing the delays of acoustic feedback by simplifying
geometries, covering more acoustic features that cannot
be captured by existing acoustic parameters, and integrating
design optimizations into the proposed design process
will be explored in the near future.
Acknowledgements
This work is supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (No. 51538006 and No. 51222814).
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Appendix A: Details of the parametric model—An example
In order to explain the technical details of the parametric
model (especially its response mechanism) more clearly, a
simplified example is provided here, which contains only
three types of components: four walls, two doors and an
aisle (Fig. A1(a)).
Its Inter-Connections and Constrains contain: (1) if one
wall is changed (including moved, rotated, scaled, split, and
deleted), adjacent walls will rotate and scale in order to
Fig. A1 “Chain reaction” of a simplified auditorium
Fig. A2 Sequence of the “chain reaction”
Now if architects move Wall 1 (Fig. A1(b)), the response
mechanism will be stimulated as Fig. A2(a). Wall 2, Wall 4
and Door 1 will be informed to change according to the
preset Inter-Connections and Constrains (as Fig. A2(b))
and the design will become Fig. A1(c).
The changes of Wall 2, Wall 4 and Door 1 will make the
chain reaction continue as Fig. A2(c) and the design will
become Fig. A1(d). However, only the change of Aisle is
valid, while other changes don’t actually happen (or in
249
keep the walls’ continuity; (2) if one wall is changed, doors
on it will move in order to remain on the wall; (3) if one
door is changed (moved), related aisles (which means that
the door is at one endpoint of the aisle) will move the
related endpoint to keep it occupied by the door; (4) if one
aisle is changed (endpoint moved), related doors (which
means that the door is at one endpoint of the aisle) will
move to keep being at the endpoint of the aisle.
other words, the length of their translation vectors is 0). In
order to avoid infinite loops, these invalid changes are
detected so that they will not cause other components to
change again (as they are shown in grey in Fig. A2(c)).
The change of Aisle will again make the chain reaction
continue as Fig. A2(d). However, there is no valid change
now, which means that the chain reaction has finished and
the new design has been generated (as Fig. A1(d)).
 250 Lu et al. / Building Simulation / Vol. 9, No. 3

Appendix B: Implementation details of the acoustic simulation interface

B.1 Currently available materials and their acoustic attributes

Frequency/Hz 125 250 500 1000 2000 4000

Gypsum 0.15 0.12 0.1 0.08 0.07 0.06

Wood for ceiling 0.18 0.14 0.1 0.08 0.07 0.06
Wood for walls 0.28 0.22 0.19 0.13 0.08 0.06
Wood for stagefloor 0.1 0.07 0.06 0.06 0.06 0.06
Plaster 0.14 0.12 0.08 0.06 0.06 0.04
Concret 0.1 0.08 0.07 0.06 0.06 0.06
Fabric 0.02 0.06 0.14 0.37 0.6 0.65
Glass 0.18 0.06 0.04 0.03 0.02 0.02
Audience 0.62 0.72 0.8 0.83 0.84 0.85

B.2 Currently included auditoriums and their material information

Front wall Side walls Rear wall Ceiling Audience floor Stage floor Balcony fronts

Boston Symphony Hall Plaster Plaster Plaster Plaster Audience Wood for stagefloor Plaster
Vienna Grosser Musikvereinssaal Wood for walls Plaster Plaster Plaster Audience Wood for stagefloor Plaster
Amsterdam Concertgebouw Plaster Plaster Plaster Plaster Audience Wood for stagefloor Plaster
Dallas Meyerson Symphony
Wood for walls Wood for walls Wood for walls Wood for ceiling Audience Wood for stagefloor Plaster
Center
National Concert Hall of China Gypsum Gypsum Gypsum Gypsum Audience Wood for stagefloor Gypsum
Porto Case Da Musica Fabric Wood for walls Fabric Wood for ceiling Audience Wood for stagefloor —

B.3 Details of the implementation of manipulating CATT in the background

Two software packages are employed here to realize the
manipulation of CATT in the background: Windows. Forms.
Sendkeys package of .NET Framework 4.5 (Microsoft 2015a)
and System. Diagnostics. Process package of .NET Framework
4.5 (Microsoft 2015b). Because CATT is a capsulated software
and cannot be invoked inside, Windows. Forms. Sendkeys
package of .NET Framework 4.5 is employed here as a virtual
keyboard, which can simulate keyboard manipulations
automatically by scripting. In this way we can manipulate
CATT to run an acoustic simulation without any manual
operations. Once a simulation is finished, the CPU utilization
rate of CATT will decrease. System. Diagnostics. Process
package of. NET Framework 4.5 is employed to detect this,
thus the end of a simulation can be recognized, and then
further operations including exporting simulation results
and post-processing can start after a simulation ends.

B.4 Details of the distribution maps

The color of a certain point is determined by the number
of acoustic parameters of that certain point within the
recommended ranges. For example, if all six parameters of
a point satisfy the recommended ranges, the color of that
point will be pure green (RGB: 0, 255, 0), while if no
parameters satisfy the recommended ranges, the color will
be pure red (RGB: 255, 0, 0). A gradient color between
green and red will be used in other situations.
The worst point here refers to the point with the least
parameters within the recommended ranges. If more than
one point has the same number of unsatisfactory parameters,
the one that deviates more from the recommended ranges
will be picked as the worst point.

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