Designing for comfort—especially acoustic comfort—is a somewhat thankless task, as we typically only notice it when it fails to function properly. Common complaints abound: hearing a conversation from the next room more clearly than the one in your own space, having to shout to be understood by someone right next to you, or dealing with excessive echoes that make staying in a room exhausting. This last issue in particular is very common in spaces with exposed structures that lack finishing materials. Because materials like concrete, glass, or metal are typically not acoustically absorbent, spaces with industrial aesthetics often suffer from high reverberation times. This means that emitted sounds take longer to dissipate, continuing to bounce off surfaces and merge with other sounds, which creates disruptive noise and reduces speech intelligibility.
However, this does not mean that every room must look like a recording studio to achieve good acoustics. Even in buildings and spaces where materials and building services are left exposed, it is entirely possible to achieve proper acoustic comfort.
-01.jpg?1585342530 "Incorporating proper acoustics into projects with exposed structures")
-01.jpg?1585342542 "Incorporating proper acoustics into projects with exposed structures")
