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Now that we have gone through the typical steps in a design process,
let’s look more critically at parts of it. Was the original design objective reasonable? Consider the objective “to design a hall that provides a high level of musical experience for the audience.” Though
it’s seemingly reasonable, if we stopped at only this objective we
could get a hall that is unexciting or uninteresting to musicians
themselves—a feeling that would undoubtedly affect more general
perceptions of the hall. It is well known, for example, that the
qualities of not only the hall but the stage and other components
affect how musicians play a hall. The stage, for example, can literally vibrate in a way such that it becomes rather like an orchestral
instrument. Common experience also suggests that there is a relationship between the type of music played and the acoustical qualities of the performance space. Gregorian chants sound marvelous
in spaces with long reverberation times (5 to 10 seconds)—times
commonly found in spacious Medieval cathedrals. Secular Baroque
music, with its clear articulated sounds and low fullness of tone,
was originally played in relatively small rooms with hard surfaces—
rooms with low reverberation times. Music of the Romantic period
plays best in halls with longer reverberation times and low directto-reflected sound ratios that produce a fullness of tone and low
definition. Music historians have long known that composers of
these periods well knew the acoustical qualities of the halls in
which their works were to be played. Richard Wagner is known to
have composed his romantic Parsifal especially for the Festspielhaus
in Bayreuth, Germany. In a like way, hall qualities evolved in
response to the music of the day, which was in turn dependent on
a whole realm of complex cultural conditions.
What is fascinating here, but problematic in design terms, is that,
if this idea is carried to its logical conclusion, there is only one
type of music that can be best played in a hall with a particular
configuration and choice of materials qualities. Even if we speculate on the contributions that nanomaterials might make in terms
of the optimization of selected material properties, such as
absorption, the overall design for a concert hall can be truly
optimized for only one music type as long as the property is a
static one. The sound absorption coefficients of various materials
that play so critical a role in the acoustics of the space are not
actually constant for a given material but rather depend on the
frequency of the impinging sound waves. Ultimately, this means
that a set of materials can be chosen to optimize a single configuration and single type of music to be played within it but
not necessarily for all types within the same hall! Choices come
A Design Vignette
Now that we have gone through the typical steps in a design process,
let’s look more critically at parts of it. Was the original design objective reasonable? Consider the objective “to design a hall that provides a high level of musical experience for the audience.” Though
it’s seemingly reasonable, if we stopped at only this objective we
could get a hall that is unexciting or uninteresting to musicians
themselves—a feeling that would undoubtedly affect more general
perceptions of the hall. It is well known, for example, that the
qualities of not only the hall but the stage and other components
affect how musicians play a hall. The stage, for example, can literally vibrate in a way such that it becomes rather like an orchestral
instrument. Common experience also suggests that there is a relationship between the type of music played and the acoustical qualities of the performance space. Gregorian chants sound marvelous
in spaces with long reverberation times (5 to 10 seconds)—times
commonly found in spacious Medieval cathedrals. Secular Baroque
music, with its clear articulated sounds and low fullness of tone,
was originally played in relatively small rooms with hard surfaces—
rooms with low reverberation times. Music of the Romantic period
plays best in halls with longer reverberation times and low directto-reflected sound ratios that produce a fullness of tone and low
definition. Music historians have long known that composers of
these periods well knew the acoustical qualities of the halls in
which their works were to be played. Richard Wagner is known to
have composed his romantic Parsifal especially for the Festspielhaus
in Bayreuth, Germany. In a like way, hall qualities evolved in
response to the music of the day, which was in turn dependent on
a whole realm of complex cultural conditions.
What is fascinating here, but problematic in design terms, is that,
if this idea is carried to its logical conclusion, there is only one
type of music that can be best played in a hall with a particular
configuration and choice of materials qualities. Even if we speculate on the contributions that nanomaterials might make in terms
of the optimization of selected material properties, such as
absorption, the overall design for a concert hall can be truly
optimized for only one music type as long as the property is a
static one. The sound absorption coefficients of various materials
that play so critical a role in the acoustics of the space are not
actually constant for a given material but rather depend on the
frequency of the impinging sound waves. Ultimately, this means
that a set of materials can be chosen to optimize a single configuration and single type of music to be played within it but
not necessarily for all types within the same hall! Choices come
A Design Vignette