The Acoustics of Green Buildings
Last week, I had the pleasure of chairing a technical session titled, “The Acoustics of Green Buildings” at the Acoustical Society of America’s international spring meeting in Portland, OR. Why would the world’s experts in building acoustics and noise control devote an afternoon to the specific sector of green buildings? Because we need to.
Green buildings outperform their ‘brown’ counterparts in almost every measure – thermal comfort, air quality, cleanliness, and general satisfaction. But according to a study by the Center for the Built Environment, a survey of 34,000 respondents found that acoustical comfort is bad. In fact, the acoustics of green buildings is worse than that of brown buildings.
FIG 1: Graph of Satisfaction from the CBE study.
To complicate matters, quieter is not absolutely better. The interplay between masking sounds and distracting noise in buildings is complicated. For example, the more efficient HVAC equipment typically used in green design is quieter, so inoffensive background noise has been reduced, allowing for other noise to make more of an impact. Combating this requires taking acoustics into account during design. One reason architects may overlook acoustical design with LEED building is that, in the past, good acoustical design meant using additional costly building materials. With advanced technology, we now have hotel and government customers that have actually saved money and hundreds of thousands of square feet incorporating new materials such as QuietRock into their LEED design.
One of the invited speakers was Kevin Powell, a research director at the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA). GSA is the biggest property manager in the country and one with a mandate for green buildings in their property portfolio. Kevin highlighted the need for better privacy in their existing buildings but more importantly, recognition from the major green building standards regarding acoustics. Currently, the LEED rating systems concerned with offices and homes offer no points for acoustical performance. There are minimal credits awarded for acoustics in schools and hospitals.
The panel’s points and concerns over current green rating systems were profiled in a Scientific American article titled: “It’s not so easy being in a green building”. As David Sykes, my session co-chair stated: “There’s a need for the profession to understand what’s going on in the LEED world and a need for the LEED world to understand what’s going on in acoustics.” I couldn’t agree more, David. I couldn’t agree more.
FYI–the Center for the Built Environment link is missing at *e* in Berkeley and linking to the wrong site.
Very interesting post.
[...] designers seem to be distracted when it comes to acoustical comfort. In my recent post “The Acoustics of Green Buildings”, I mention that green buildings outperform their ‘brown’ counterparts in almost every [...]
[...] multifamily housing. Often builders think about occupant comfort as they’re building, and we’ve seen in green construction that occupant ratings on green construction outweigh their [...]