A column fromA&B 06|2022 issue .
Architects have superpowers. Advanced eavesdroppers, pegasus and other surveillance gear still have competition in the form of the acoustic achievements of interior and building designers. Some of the architects' creations are also rivaled by all kinds of jammers and sophisticated tools for sowing informational confusion.
If I were a spy, I would sit non-stop in the covered atrium of Poznan's Castle Cultural Center. The glass dome that covered the lobby there with a cafeteria a decade ago is a wonderful eavesdropping device. It has been constructed in such a way that, although you can barely hear the person on the other side of the table, you can perfectly understand every word from the opposite side of the spacious atrium. Even a whisper comes through with perfect quality. Full surround and zero interference.
This is an ideal case, but not the only one. I encounter slightly less perfect versions of this solution in many other meticulously designed interiors, not infrequently featured in the pages of design and architecture magazines. Cafes, restaurants, office open spaces and offices. Exquisite and - full of acoustic surprises. You probably know the clatter of a spoon falling twenty meters away. Or - on another note - the barely audible voice of the person sitting next to you. If it's boring, we can still get away with it. Worse if he confesses feelings to us, for example. In "Alice on the Other Side of the Mirror" you had to run as fast as possible to stay still. Here you have to move as far away as possible to hear anything. Except that this is usually impossible, because there are always some people inside. What follows, therefore, is an acoustic intensification. Everyone is shaking their jaws, even though they are standing next to each other. A perfect jammer of conversations and thoughts.
And here it's time for a séance of paternophobia. I don't think there is a study on this, but for a nice few years now, Poles have been emitting more and more decibels. They no longer speak, but broadcast, rumble and roar. They are vocally seizing space. A few seasons ago, an acquaintance accidentally betrayed the pre-Polish Baltic in favor of German beaches. She returned rested and surprised. Surprised that she was rested. As it turned out - thanks to the silence. After three days on the Teutonic sand, she discovered that she no longer needed to call the children. Talking was enough. The beach, yes - crowded, was bustling, not jazzy.
There are two explanations - the first worse than the second. We are tearing each other down because - as a society - we are insecure, like micro-dogs who make up for their lanky size and dorky appearance with high C barking. However, this is a simplistic and anti-Polish thesis, and therefore unacceptable. I'm about to hear, by the way, that the Italians and Spaniards - these are the ones who turn up the potentiometer! So it is necessary to identify a scapegoat. Here you go, here is the collective scapegoat: designers, investors and municipal managers. The acoustics of the rooms and spaces they create means we have to stuff ourselves more and more. Voilà!
Surveillance is also aided by walls of development grandeur serving interneighborhood integration. It seemed that the worst was already: in the People's Republic of Poland. And here - here you go: the walls are still thin, and such, for example, "micro-apartments" optimize surveillance. Behind each partition - another apartment, and a one-room one at that. At least four loud-talking neighbors to listen in at the same time, and without the possibility of escaping to another, more distant room. Spying is also aided by luxuries such as "silent elevators" with which developers have recently been tempting. It is known - if an ordinary elevator without a muffler starts up with a roar, there is nothing from listening.
Instead, without a muffler, cars are recently driven by young people or guys on the verge of an age breakdown. They fart their engines as much as they can in the canyons of downtown streets - with no reaction from police officers. The problem is not only ours, but in Paris, for example, they are already buying sound radars to track down the noise makers and automatically stick the fines. That's probably the only effective way, since fans of engine howling won't be caught by staggered noise surveys. Acoustics experts make it clear: the survey is an average, so it does not include the occasional howling motorcycles, services at a signal and other sonic attractions. Including the squeals of children crowded into the micro playgrounds of new developments, where the echoes give a show between high walls those measly dozen meters away.
As you can see and hear, the new architecture is not particularly concerned about noise pollution, which, as is well known and without scientific research, is capable of causing permanent dithering. I don't know how it is today, but a quarter of a century ago , future architects in college were told so much about noise, that it is there. And that there are limits to it. If one read Wejchert, one found a few more urbanistic curiosities. And that's it. Eyes, or rather ears, are opened only after talking to acoustics researchers. It turns out, for example, that such a fountain hums as loudly as cars on an expressway. But it can still serve as noise protection. Humans like the sound of water, so it's good to drown out unpleasant noise generating the same number of decibels with it. Greenery? Surprise. A row of trees doesn't actually insulate from anything, but the psyche does us in and tells us it's quieter. And - subjectively - we feel better. On the other hand, the fact that flat street frontages are a curse can basically be guessed without acoustic experts. The lack of varied planes, angles, bays and cladding to dampen anything can make even an intimate street into a rumbling corridor.
"If you live in the city, there must be noise". - the dutiful purveyors of clichés will speak up and start spreading visions of an idyllic suburban hacienda. Apparently, they have missed the time of mutual barking of dogs, doggies and pugs, whose population, by the way, is also growing in blocks of flats (perhaps as a protection against neighborly eavesdropping). Out of nowhere to rescue them? Not exactly. The glorious silence usually prevails in churches, and it looks like it will be there more and more. Urban anti-noise reserve. A new, this time useful function of churches.
Anyone have any other ideas?
Somehow I don't hear any.
