Wie kommt das Hoeren in den Entwurf? Ein Versuch im zweiten Studienjahr im Fachbereich Architektur am Waterford Institute of Technology in Irland

(Article is in German) Architects are often accused of “not being interested in acoustics because it is invisible”. Architectural design, particularly at the preliminary stage, has always been developed visually. Traditionally, as a result of their training, architects develop a project visually rather than aurally. However, designing architects have also to deal creatively with more or less invisible parameters such as: socio-cultural demands, climatic aspects or even daylight, which can be considered to be visible but certainly is everything but constant. If an architect’s design ability is about observation and awareness and if light is considered to be much more than just being bright or dark, how then could we implement early awareness that sound is much more than noise or silence, and that sound planning is much more than just using anti-noisepanels? We asked 2nd year architecture students at Waterford Institute of Technology to (re-)think sound and to question the sound qualities of their own projects. Thus sound experience is integrated into the basic design and not just considered specialist knowledge for specific projects....