Ecophon Acoustic Bulletin

Andrew Parkin

Jonas Christensson made an interview with Andrew Parkin, Technical Director at RPS. They met shortly after Andrew had finished his lecture and Jonas grasped the opportunity to ask him a couple of questions.

Question 1:
What are the most important things to consider when we should create a good sound environment in open plan offices?
Listen to Andrew's answer (1,20 minutes)

Question 2:
How do we solve the need of concentration in open plan offices?
Listen to Andrew's answer (2,20 minutes)

More about Andrew Parkin or RPS Group:
Andrew Parkin - Technical Director, Birmingham Newland House - P&D
Tel: +44 (0)121 456 1560
Email: Andrew.Parkin@rpsgroup.com

Posted by Marc Janssen at 3:34 PM | Permalink

Stephen Dance
Colin Campbell managed to meet up with Stephen Dance, (Senior Lecturer at London South Bank University) between his papers and chairing of sessions on Tuesday.

Please listen to Stephen explaining this unique product innovation and how it works;

For more information please contact Stephen; dances@lsbu.ac.uk
http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/esbe/departments/urbeng/research.shtml

Posted by Colin Campbell at 1:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Alan Knibb
Colin Campbell is talking to Alan Knibb, Senior Engineer in Asset Management with Essex County Council about his specific interest in in prioritising classroom acoustics for children with special hearing requirements.

Please listen to the interview;

Interview now in full, appologies for previous technical issue which cut the interview short.

For further information please contact Alan Knibb: Alan.knibb@essex.gov.uk
Essex schools homepage;
http://www.essexcc.gov.uk/vip8/ecc/ECCWebsite/dis/cha.jsp?channelOid=16355

Also please see BBC programme featuring the interesting acoustic experiences of the children and teachers at Sweyne Park School;http://www.acousticbulletin.com/EN/2009/09/bbc_see_hear_programme.html
and for the NDCS interim report covering the Essex programme Click here to download the file

Posted by Colin Campbell at 1:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Nils-Åke Andersson

CEN/TC 126, Building acoustics, has created a working group, WG 11, to develop Test Codes for suspended, acoustic ceilings. WG 11 started its work about a year ago with Nils-Åke Andersson from Saint-Gobain Ecophon as convener and has now about 15 participants from around Europe. The reason doing this work is the problems with differences in measurement results from laboratories.He is interviewed by Guus Klamerek, concept developer - education for the Benelux.

Listen to the interview to find out more about the test codes (1:25 minutes)

One of the duties of working group is to work with Round Robin Tests.
Listen here to what that actually means. (2 minutes)

Posted by Marc Janssen at 12:40 PM | Permalink

Posted by Marc Janssen at 11:07 AM | Permalink

Monika Rychtarikova

Shortly after her presentation, Monika Rychtarikova was interviewed by Marielle Klijn.
The title of her presentation was: "speech transmission index and articulation index in the context of open plan offices".

One of the conclusions of her session is that reverberation time is not an adequate quantity to fully describe the acoustical comfort.

Please find out more by listening to the interview:

Posted by Marc Janssen at 6:05 PM | Permalink

Jonas Christensson, Concept Developer - Offices

Martin Lindholm took some time to interview Jonas Christensson about his lecture to take place at the afternoon session of acoustics of enclosed spaces. Martin asked him about the essence of his presentation. Main question is: "Is it possible to create a good working environment in an open plan office"? Jonas also discussed the future of open plan offices.

Please listen to the interview and find out more (2:40 minutes)

Posted by Martin Lindholm at 5:48 PM | Permalink

Erling Nilsson

A couple of hours before his lecture, titled Room Acoustic Design of Open Plan Offices, Erling is interviewed by Pauli Pallaskorpi. Please listen to the interview (2:30 min)

Posted by Marc Janssen at 4:15 PM | Permalink

Arianna Astolfi

Arianna Astolfi, from researcher in Building Physics and building services at Politecnico di Torino, Italy, was presenting the results on speech intelligibility and measurements performed in a primary laboratory-classroom before and after a sound absorption acoustical treatment.

She concluded that the correlation between speech intelligibility and objective parameters are obtained for children of different age and also that the intelligibility decreases due to the reverberation.

The laboratory-classroom was provided with a sound absorption suspended ceiling and also a reflective ceiling in the central part. Due to this the volume went from 215 to 195 m3. They also used the backwall by placing mineral wool panels and covering the lower part of the backwall with plasterboard. The result of this treatment was that the occupied midfrequency reverberation time (RT) was decreasing from 1,6 s to 0,4 s. They performed over 1600 tests on 200 students, from age of 6 to 11, before and after the acoustical treatment. During the test they added simulated traffic noise from an external source and impact noise was generated on the floor above the classroom.

They found that the correlation between speech intelligibility and objective parameters are obtained for children of different age and also that the intelligibility decreases due to the reverberation.

If you want more details, please contact Arianna Astolfi.

Posted by Martin Lindholm at 4:12 PM | Permalink

During the afternoon of Tuesday 27th, a session is planned on Acoustic Comfort in Architecture. One of the presentations looks at room acoustic design in open plan offices. Erling Nilsson and Björn Hellström wrote the paper called Room acoustic design of open plan offices

Erling explains: An increasing amount of acousticians dive for the definition of room acoustic parameters that best support the activities performed by the people in the room ( RAC™). The subjective experience of people is becoming leading in acoustical design.

Posted by Marc Janssen at 4:12 PM | Permalink

Gudrun Jonsdottir

One of the participants at EuroNoise 2009 is Gudrun Jonsdottir, acoustician at EFLA, Iceland. At the conference, I had the opportunity to talk to her about noise control in hospitals in Iceland.

What is the situation in Iceland when it comes to hospital buildings; do people think the sound environment is important?
Hospital staff and patients make complaints about the sound environment, I must say. They are aware of the problems it causes, like tiredness and irritation. But they do not know what to do about it.

And what do you think, is it important to work with acoustic and noise control in hospitals?Yes, definitely. There are a lot of studies that shows that good room acoustics can, for example, lower medication requirements and decrease the number of days patients stay in the hospital. We have a lot of evidence that it is really important.?

Are there any specific room types in hospitals where it is of special importance to improve the room acoustics?To my opinion, it is any room where there are two or more patients and where there is a lot of medical equipment that makes different sounds. This environment can lead to stressful situations for the patient.

When you evaluate the acoustics in a room, what kind of aspects do you think is important to measure?The reverberation time and the sound pressure level, among others. And in some room types it can also be important to measure the sound propagation, privacy and speech clarity. In a hospital there are lots of different types of spaces.?

Finally, what about the solutions? What would you recommend to architects who want to lower noise levels in hospitals?Of course, it is usually the ceilings we recommend to provide the required sound absorption. It can also be important to add sound absorption on the walls. I evaluate how best to optimise the interventions, depending on the layout of the room, the ceiling heights, and the dimension of the room. Before giving solutions, it is always important to make clear what the aim of the work is and what you want to achieve.

Posted by Katrin Bergmark at 12:19 PM | Permalink

The Euronoise programme includes almost every aspect of acoustics. This 3 day event covers topics such as noise control, standards in acoustics, occupational noise and influence of sound on human beeings.

Anthony Thomas(on the right) standing here with Jian Kang

Of particular interest is the section “Room acoustics in hospitals”....

Ecophon employees Katrin Bergmark (click here to see her movie), Marc Janssen and Anthony Thomas submitted a paper and the latter is to present a paper about Room Acoustic Comfort™ concept.

Erling Nilsson

Erling Nilsson will present the outcomes of the NICe (Noridc Innovation Centre) on acoustics in Open Plan Offices

Jonas Christensson

Jonas Christensson will present the outcomes of a survey made among people working in open plan solutions.

An exhibition is being held along with the conference. It is devoted mostly to sound field modelling, acoustical materials and measurement tools.

Posted by Marc Janssen at 5:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

John Hinton, President of the Intitute of Acoustics

Shortly after lunch we had a quick chat with John Hinton, President at the Institute of Acoustics in the UK and organiser of the Euronoise conference in Edinburg this year. In a short interview he shares with him the first impressions and what's more to come. Having met John Hinton at last years Euronoise conference in Paris, it's nice to hear and see him again

Please listen to the interview.

Posted by Marc Janssen at 3:43 PM | Permalink

The lower levels of the conference building have been organised into a huge meeting and exhibition area. Also here is where the lunches and coffee breaks are being organised.

Posted by Marc Janssen at 3:16 PM | Permalink

The entrance to the conference early this morning

Around 800 particpants from all over Europe will be present at the Euronoise Conference 2009. This morning at 09.00 the opening of the exhibition area and the plenary session formed the start of a 3 day conference on acoustics. Stands at the exhibition area were completed and manned and people urged to the first sessions.

Posted by Marc Janssen at 2:19 PM | Permalink

From the 26th to 28th October, Ecophon will bring live reports from the Euronoise conference in Edinburgh on Acoustic Bulletin.

Stay tuned for regular updates, either through RSS feed or just visit www.acousticbulletin.com

WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING IN EDINBURGH?

Key working groups will gather ...
- ISO standardisation group have a session to discuss Open Plan spaces
- ISO354 meet to discuss revision of the standard and the measurement of absorption

- Meeting of Test Code for sound absorption measurements group
- Modelling / visualisation tool workshop training
- Ecophon Networks for Offices, Educational and Healthcare premises will have a 2 day meeting post conference

Euronoise is the week before Halloween, could be a good week to go on the famous Edinburgh Ghost tour....

We look forward to seeing you there!

AcousticBulletinlive@Edinburgh

Posted by Marc Janssen at 2:11 PM | Permalink

Recently Jonas Christensson, Concept Developer at Ecophon handed over some tips to the readers of Arbetslivet, an online magazine about the quality of the work environment.

Jonas specificlly looked at one of the most challlengeing and discussed areas in office premises, namely the open felxible plan solution.

Click here to read the article online.

Use the google translator option to read it in your local language (non Swedish)

Posted by Marc Janssen at 12:01 PM | Permalink