Concepts & Methods in Architectural Acoustics from the Classical Period to the Enlightenment

Abstract

Herein is presented a critical examination of the early concepts in architectural acoustics in the western world. This study suggests that the historical extent of architectural acoustics is much more sophisticated than is generally considered. The presentation focuses on specific contributors and their discoveries in the nascent art of architectural acoustics. Among those studied are Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, the ancient Roman architect responsible for the tome De Architectura; German polymath Athanasius Kircher who delicately balanced empirical science with magic to explain acoustical phenomena in his two books, the Phornugia Nova and the encyclopedic Musurgia Universalis; and English architects-cum-scientists Sir Samuel Morland and Sir Robert Hooke whose wide and varied research often entered into acoustics. In the works of these gentlemen are elegant, precocious, and sometimes absurd revelations on the science of sound and surface.