Acoustic
by Terry MacKenzie Hoy
Mackenzine Hoy Consulting
Acoustics Engineers
[email protected]
www.machoyrsa.com
H
uman beings have five senses. Of these,
only one is not relevant to buildings, taste.
Architectural design naturally skips past a
requirement that the building could smell
good because if it didn’t, nobody would
work there. The senses of vision and touch
are very much catered for in buildings. To
any architect, if you say “Falling Waters”
they will generally reply “Frank Lloyd Wright” - a house in the
USA designed by architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, and located on a
stream. It is a US National monument. Over the years, architects
have been unstinting in their praise for the structure, due to the
outstanding vision it presents. Unsurprisingly, vision is the most
compelling – touch, not so much as in physical tactioception as
felt by the fingers but in the form of contact with surfaces when
walking or sitting.
A sense very relevant to buildings is hearing. After vision, this
is probably the most prominent sense of the five. Yet, in South
Africa, it is the one sense which often seems to be completely
ignored by people building buildings for reasons which I will
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now outline. You will note, I wrote “people building buildings”
and not “people designing buildings”. All over South Africa are
buildings in which the occupants either can’t hear or hear far
too much – in which privacy is non existent and in which great
aural discomfort is prevalent.
The people in the professional team (in which we include the
client) who ensure that buildings are noisy, audibly uncomfortable
and stressful in terms of poor acoustics and noise control are,
in no particular order, the client, the quantity surveyor and the
interior designer. People often think that the architects are
responsible for the poor acoustics i n a building but this is not
so. I will deal with this matter further on.
In the interim, I wish to explain how these three people, the
client, the quantity surveyor and the interior designer, can have
acoustics and noise control failings which occur in the majority
of South African buildings and structures parked firmly at their
door. The client wants a building which costs as little as possible.
The lesson that may be learned that a cheap car is not the most
comfortable car does not, for the client, exist in buildings. Most
of the time, the client will be renting the building to a tenant.
Acoustics