It’s not such a foreign experience to stroll through a building before it’s been built. Architectural “fly-through’s” - digital animations, usually set to an especially unnerving brand of easy-listening techno - have become a standard means of explaining the experience of a building before the first golden shovel hits the soil.

Architects have become quite adept at using these tools to illustrate the way a building might look, but what of the way it sounds? Slick animations and renderings will do little to show a symphony conductor how a the thin strains of a piccolo will reverberate in his yet-to-be constructed hall, or the way a professor’s voice will project to the last row of seats in an un-built auditorium.

Thanks to something called ambisonics, architects and their clients are now getting a chance to hear their buildings as they’re being designed.

Last week, Raj Patel, principal and acoustic consultant at Arup treated the crowd at Yale School of Architecture’s Sound of Architecture Symposium to a presentation on his company’s Sound Lab. The Sound Lab uses a battery of speakers arranged in a spherical configuration to mimic the acoustic properties of a digital architectural model. In real time, designers can change the shape of a hall, the material of the seats, the angle of the walls, and hear how it might affect the acoustics of the final building. The technology is changing the way architects and acoustic engineers design. I caught up with Patel to find out more:

Jordan Pierce: How did the idea for the Sound Lab come about?

Raj Patel: It came from the need to have a tool to explain acoustics and sound issues to architects, artists, clients, musicians, and other design professionals by listening, rather than technical reports, graphs, and other jargon. It was also driven by an aim to make acoustics and sound something you could consider and actively use in the design process, rather than just “try and make work” after the fact.

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When the symposium “The Sound of Architecture” kicks off this evening at the Yale School of Architecture, designers in skinny jeans and square black glasses may well be outnumbered by a cast of artists, musicologists, engineers, and even an archeoacoustician for good measure. Though Friday’s keynote will be delivered by architectural luminary Elizabeth Diller of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the weekend’s program will be populated by some decidedly un-architectural figures.

The lineup of speakers and performers, drawing upon a broad array of disciplines, is designed to take the aural dimension of architecture beyond the exclusive domain of the acoustic technicians who meticulously tune the contours of concert halls and theaters.

“Acoustics have been important to designers since the days of Vitruvius,” says co-organizer and Yale PhD candidate Joseph Clarke. “But architects often tend to think and design visually, with sound relegated to a secondary role. By bringing together a range of speakers across so many different disciplines, this symposium seeks to breathe new life into study of the sonic dimensions of architecture.”

Some of the highlights include:

• A talk titled “The Ear, the Eye, and the Space,” by Craig Hodgetts, architect of the Hollywood Bowl’s newest incarnation.
• A performance of composer Ingram Marshall’s work “Alcatraz,” blending images, music and “found audio” of buoys, birds, and cell doors.
• John D. Peters of the University of Iowa taking a close look at Mormons’ role as acousticians.
• Sound studies star Jonathan Sterne, author of “MP3: The Meaning of a Format” discussing “A Simple Theory of Convolution Reverb.”

“Carchitecture”

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In Orlando’s Peabody Hotel’s public spaces, a positive experience is created by the sounds of water flowing and splashing.

Gently moving water makes us comfortable. Its rhythmic, primal sounds soothe away the everyday stresses of modern life. Though we have known, instinctively, about the psychological boost we get from listening to moving water—even before the effect was investigated by scientists or commercialized by the people who market desk top fountains—now we have the scientific evidence.

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