This article was originally published by Venetian Letter.
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There’s a fascinating book by German journalist Joachim-Ernst Berendt called The World is Sound. The book itself is about musical cultures around the world, but the title sums up just why sound is so important: Sound is omnipresent. It affects us 24 hours a day. Even when we sleep, our brains listen out for sonic cues about our surroundings.
As human evolved, our ears were (and still are) important survival tools, feeding us information that might be the difference between life and death. So, we’ve evolved to respond very quickly and powerfully to sound. We hear things even when we can’t see them and we use sound to make sense of physical spaces––which makes it a particularly important consideration in the built environment.
Crucially, sound has the potential to either stimulate or sooth us. It can cause stress and trigger our fight-or-flight responses, or it can activate our parasympathetic responses, calming our brains and bodies.
Think about the type of sounds you typically encounter in a building. Take an office, school or hospital, for instance: Air conditioning, other people’s conversations, machinery, traffic, construction, slamming doors… These sounds aren’t part of a designed experience. They’re accidental byproducts. And crucially, most of them are manmade.
This is an important differentiator. Given that we spend most of our time indoors, these noises make up the majority of people’s lifelong soundtracks, and there are real differences in how we respond to artificial sounds compared to natural ones.
Artificial sounds can elicit negative emotional states. In one study,i researchers used an MRI scanner to compare what was happening in people’s brains when they heard natural and artificial sounds. In the artificial condition, the brain had an “inward-directed” focus of attention, similar to brain states found in people with anxiety and depression.
Natural sounds produced the opposite effect: People’s brains showed an “outward-directed” attention of focus that’s associated with restoration and relaxation. It’s a feeling you might have experienced during a long peaceful walk in nature––except this was just from listening to a few minutes of nature sound.
Low frequency noise like air-conditioning or machinery, even at a moderate volume, can also cause stress and disrupt our interfere with our cognitive abilities.
Without stating the obvious, artificial noise is unnatural. We haven’t evolved in the presence of these sounds and it takes mental effort to suppress them. These artificial noises are monotonous too. Although it might seem counterintuitive, we get more restorative value from information-rich experiences compared to something stagnant, repetitive or overly simple.
One sound that’s full of information is human speech. It’s more than just the words themselves; conversations are coded with emotional cues too. From an evolutionary perspective, speech helps us build social bonds, share information and communicate threats. As a result, we’re hard-wired to listen and decode it.
Speech is amazing, but in the wrong scenario it can be a huge detractor to people’s experiences in buildings. It takes up most of our mental bandwidth. In workplaces, it’s the biggest source of dissatisfaction and distractions.
Machinery causes stress with its monotony and artificiality, while speech steals our attention. But natural soundscapes can get it “just right”––Goldilocks style.
Natural soundscapes are rich with information––birdsong, rustling leaves, flowing water and more. This lushness and variation captures the brain’s attention in a non-intrusive way and helps us feel good.
Our brains are wired to seek gentle novelty and change, so when we listen to lush, organic natural soundscapes it can create an auditory environment that fosters both focus and calm, helping us recover from mental fatigue and also encouraging better cognitive performance.
Some natural sounds are better than others, so it should be prescribed with precision. We prefer soundscapes that indicate safety and nourishment. For example, songbirds are more relaxing and restorative than bird calls that are rough, screechy or overly simple, while rich, biodiverse soundscapes are preferred to those with biological uniformity.
The effects of hearing natural soundscapes can be profoundly beneficial: Reduced stress including regulated heart-rate, breathing and muscle tension; positive emotional states; and better cognitive performance ––even compared to silence. Patients in healthcare environments even require less pain medication in the presence of natural sounds.
The term “soundscaping” refers to the intentional crafting of auditory experiences. Instead of simply removing noise, soundscaping introduces designed, ambient sound into spaces to support different activities and emotional states: whether that’s calm, focus, refuge, energy, creativity, rest or collaboration.
In recent years, smart building technology has made this concept accessible to designers. We know the importance of lush, organic sound. Generative technology means that building systems can deliver scientifically-beneficial soundscaping that changes over the course of a day without artificial loops, responds to changing needs and creates different sensory experiences throughout a building.
Soundscaping also opens new possibilities of immersion and wellbeing for biophilic architecture. There’s cross talk between all our senses and what we see shapes our perception of what we hear, and vice versa.
Buildings by their very nature are all multi-sensory experiences – whether they’ve been designed that way or left to chance. Even silence has a certain effect on people––in fact, silence tends to make us feel uneasy because of its evolutionary connotations.
Research shows that the benefits of biophilic design are elevated when sight and sound are aligned. While natural soundscapes can have restorative effects independent of visual design, research suggests that multi-sensory experiences can contextualize biophilia to create more immersive and restorative experiences.
Architecture is about so much more than aesthetics. Soundscaping gives architects a proactive design tool that weaves sound into the physical building to guide people’s movements, support different activities, improve health and elevate visual designs.
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Fran Board is a sensory designer and researcher, with over ten years’ experience in workplaces, hospitals, schools and retail. In her role at Moodsonic she works with some of the world’s largest architects, interior designers and organizations, using soundscaping to optimize people’s sensory experiences in buildings.
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