Considerations on Indoor Acoustic Environments; Listen Carefully, and You Will Hear Real Sounds around You— The Future of Acoustic Environments and Human Senses —

Currently, about 10% of Japanese elementary schools use “open-plan classroom” designs. An open-plan classroom is a type of school building where the walls between corridors and classrooms are removed and open spaces are created next to classrooms. The design was introduced from the West. It aims to create a learning environment which enables personalized and individualized teaching. It is designed to create spaces where higher quality learning activities can be conducted flexibly rather than keeping students in confined classrooms. The open plan enabled teachers from different classes and subjects to cooperate with each other in supporting children’s voluntary learning. “Open-plan schools” have various benefits when it comes to the practical significance of class activities, but on the other hand, there is an increased sound problem caused by the removal of walls. This is the issue that I am focusing on. In an open-plan school, sound travels well and even disturbs students attending lessons. I am looking for architectural solutions to this problem, mainly for open-plan classrooms to be built in the future. More specifically, I am examining designs and materials that reduce the sound propagation, by combining various elements including the use of acoustic materials, the installation of sidewalls that block sounds made in each classroom, and the creation of larger spaces between classrooms. In my opinion, a continuous study on the impact that learning in open-plan schools has on children’s mental and physical development needs to be conducted in parallel. I would like to continue to work on the theme of developing optimum acoustic environments for children.

Another theme that I am tackling is the issue of acoustic environments in nurseries. Due to the increasing number of children on waiting lists for admission to nurseries, the number of nursery facilities is increasing and their diversity is also increasing, especially in urban area. There is a municipality that established new nurseries, and announced its achievement of eliminating the waiting list. This is great news, but creating nurseries quickly without carefully considering their environments presents some problems that should not be overlooked. Generally, preschool children from 0 to 5 years old are looked after in nurseries. Recently an increasing number of nurseries have started to put all children in one room instead of children of different ages being looked after in separate rooms. This type of nursery is often seen in “tenant” nurseries established in rooms in railway station buildings, etc. A nursery that I visited as part of my studies had more than 100 children in one room with no partition walls. The acoustic environment in such nurseries is, in short, terribly noisy. You would not hear a sound of a vacuum cleaner running near you, for example. It is obvious that such conditions should not be left unchanged. It could cause sleep disorders and affect memorization abilities as well as compromising the immune systems of children. It is also a difficult environment for the nurses to work in. Not a few nurses suffer from a sore throat because they have to shout when communicating with people, as well as suffering from slight deafness. When talking about the improvements to the nursery environment, hygiene has been the center of attention, and the acoustic environment has been neglected. Research into acoustic environments in open-plan schools has progressed over the past few years, but research into acoustic environments in nurseries has just begun. I would like to continue to explore what can be done to achieve a comfortable acoustic environment for children and nurses using an architectural approach, and find solutions to the problem by conducting surveys and verification.

Let me move on to a discussion about modern Japan. The explosive increase in the use of the Internet and smartphones ushered in an era which is dominated by digitized information. People from various quarters point out the social problems caused by communications using digitized information. For example, people can become shut-ins because they can communicate using digitized information while staying at home. Such lifestyles could induce crimes. I do not think that a society dominated by digitized information is an attractive and comfortable society. We need to go back to “physical” lifestyles, i.e. become more aware of our bodies and use our physical senses. One of the physical senses is the auditory sense by which sound is perceived. Many people listen to music with earphones, but the music you hear through earphones sounds completely different from the original sound. I think that true music happens when performers play to an audience that is physically present. The same thing can be said about communications between people. Person to person communication through live sound enables deep communication. When you get away from digitized information and listen carefully, you start to hear real sounds around you. I believe that, person to person sound communications without the aid of digital media are indispensable for survival of the human society.

* The information contained herein is current as of November 2013.
* The contents of articles on M’s Opinion are based on the personal ideas and opinions of the author and do not indicate the official opinion of Meiji University.