Exploring the Link Between Building Acoustics, Health and Wellbeing

That’s what the new whitepaper from Rockfon – “Exploring the Link Between Building Acoustics, Health and Wellbeing,” in partnership with the International Well Building Institute (IWBI) aims to clarify. Designers and building owners can achieve acoustic comfort for health and wellbeing by specifying key metrics such as Noise Reduction Coefficient (NRC) and complying with building standards and guidelines.

Because of the well-established relationship between building acoustics in offices, schools and medical care facilities and the health and wellbeing of the occupants, most building standards, guidelines and certification systems have at least minimum or prerequisite acoustics requirements. Some also have additional requirements for enhanced or optimized acoustic environments.

Key topics include controlling indoor noise and reverberation with high-performing, sound absorbing surfaces, isolating enclosed rooms from adjacent areas with robust walls and floor slabs and ensuring that background sound is not too loud or too quiet. In European countries, complying with these acoustic requirements is typically federally legislated while in North American countries, compliance is mostly voluntary. Greater understanding about how the acoustics requirements in these standards can materialize inside actual buildings can be gained from looking at specific examples of an office building, school and medical care facility.

The link between building acoustics and health and wellbeing is established. Post occupancy surveys inside most buildings constructed over the past 20 years do not typically show that their designs and materials contribute as much as they could to occupant health and wellbeing. That is changing, slowly.

New and updated building standards, guidelines and certification systems with more stringent acoustic criteria are leading the way. More building owners, who now appreciate the link between acoustics and wellbeing and who are willing to invest in it, are opting to design their spaces per the acoustic requirements in these evolved standards. Product manufacturers are responding too with innovation, technology and engineering to provide higher performing options that are also favorable from the perspectives of fire safety, natural light reflection, low emissions/indoor air quality and sustainability/recyclability. The building industry appears to be on the right path for the next 20 years.

Design for the Senses: The link between acoustics and wellbeing