Meeting Room Acoustic Design in the Historical Building: The Example of Istanbul University Faculty of Science and Letters Building

Year 2022, Volume: 1 Issue: 2, 91 - 130, 25.11.2022

Tarık Serhat Bozkurt

Abstract

In the restoration of historical buildings, the characteristics of the original period and the design decisions of the original period should be preserved. The rich interior volumes of historical buildings should not be reduced, the original ceiling height should not be changed and their original interior forms should be conserved. In addition, the requirements of current standards in the restoration of historical buildings should be met as much as possible. Providing auditory comfort conditions is also one of the important parameters in the restoration process. In this study, the meeting room in the historical building was analysed, the design decisions of the original period of the meeting room were preserved, and an acoustic improvement project was presented depending on the characteristics of the historical building. In the acoustic project proposal, the original room height, the richness of the interior volume, and the perception of the mirrored vault system were preserved to maintain original period design decisions. In the acoustic project proposal, auditory comfort conditions were improved by increasing the total absorption rate in the meeting room. Reverberation time analyses and delayed reflection analyses were performed. In addition, the homogeneous propagation of the sound in the space was examined by using the acoustic simulation program. With the acoustic project proposal, the reverberation time was controlled in line with the DIN18041 standard, the delayed reflections were greatly reduced, the homogeneous propagation of the sound in the space has been improved, and the intelligibility of speech in the meeting room has been increased.

Keywords

Conservation of the historical space, Room acoustic design, Reverberation time, Speech intelligibility, Auditory comfort conditions, Acoustic problems

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