Ecophon Acoustic Bulletin

Last week, I visited a Health care conference in the UK, London to be exact, called Delivering community healthcare buildings.
At this conference, relevant healthcare design experts and key architects in this sector got together to provide a comprehensive overview of the challenges and opportunities involved in the design of a number of different community healthcare buildings.

Charlotte Ruben, representing White Arkitekter from Sweden presented the delegates a new attitude towards designing Health care premises, one in which the sound and healing environment is the main aim. It will be very interesting to follow the mega project she and her colleagues are working on: it's the design of the new Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm. Expectations are high since this is going to be the state of the art. 1 biliion Euro's, 300.000 m2.
The high awareness for quality in Sweden will hopefully result in good room acoustic discussions. To be continued...

The entire program is available here

Posted by Marc Janssen at 5:22 PM | Permalink

More and more, acoustical performance of buildings is described in standards and norms. These are useful documents for expressing requirements and expectations regarding the acoustics. Here is a short overview, gathering standards addressing single building types as well as more general standards (in order of publication). All of them are available in English (original or english version). Please help us to complete the list by posting a comment.

France
NF S31-080:2006 Acoustics - Offices and associated areas - Acoustic performance levels and criteria by type of area

Norway
NS 8175:2005 Acoustic conditions in Buildings – sound classification of various types of buildings

Finland
SFS 5907:2004 Acoustic Classification of Buildings

Germany
DIN 18041:2004 Acoustical quality in small to medium-sized rooms

United Kingdom
BB 93 (2003) Acoustic Design of Schools

USA
ANSI S12.60-2002 American National Standard Acoustical Performance Criteria, Design Requirements, and Guidelines for Schools

Sweden
SS 025268:2001 Acoustics - Sound classification of spaces in buildings - Institutional premises, rooms for education, preschools and leisure-time centres, rooms for office work and hotels

Australia / New Zealand
AS/NZS 2107:2000 Recommended design sound levels and reverberation times for building interiors

Posted by Pierre Chigot at 9:24 AM | Permalink