Evaluation of urban soundscape by future architects

Abstract

Urban soundscape design has drawn great attention along with the ever increasing urban noise level. Previous research shows that people with different social and demographic backgrounds may have different sound preferences in urban environment. For example, gender, age, and cultural background have been proved to affect peoples soundscape evaluation. In this research the soundscape evaluation by a group of architectural students was made, investigating how the future architectural/urban designers value the urban soundscape they experience everyday, and how they would like to design urban soundscape. The soundscape evaluation/walk was conducted with 60 students in a number of urban open public spaces in Sheffield, UK. The evaluation was both for the overall soundscape and for individual sounds. Eighteen indices with seven-point bipolar rating scale were used. Both connotative meanings of urban environment sounds, such as calming–agitating, interesting–boring and like–dislike, and denotative meanings, such as quiet–noisy, sharp–flat and smooth–rough, were considered. In addition, the students were asked to give design suggestions. The semantic differential technique was applied for the analysis. Comparison was also made between this special group and general public. The results are useful for studying the links/interactions between general architectural/urban design and the soundscape design. [Work supported by British Academy.]