Acoustical considerations in future building design processes.

Abstract

“Sustainability” is the major buzzword in the building design and construction arena today. The context often talks about products that will result in a smaller initial and ongoing carbon footprint. This paper will look at the idea of sustainability as a process, covering the end‐to‐end design and construction process as well as the process of generating and managing building data during its life cycle. The advent of lean construction and building information modeling is an opportunity to make acoustics more inherent to the conceptual design and prevent it from being a casualty of the “value engineering”. Significant questions do arise, however, with regard to the acoustical information needed for such processes. These questions include, but are not limited to, what information is needed, who will need it, and how will it be exchanged. The answers to these questions differ when considering the above‐mentioned processes and efforts to be holistically efficient and sustainable. The answers to these questions will be integrated into how building design is taught with regard to acoustics other specialties.