Effects of sound environment on perceived spaciousness
Résumé
People?s perceptions of architectural environments are based on multiple senses, including vision and hearing. However, the importance of hearing has been commonly overlooked in architectural design. Architects usually focus on noise elimination in the environment and sound insulation between adjoining rooms instead of expecting sound to play an active role in architectural spaces. Therefore, a laboratory study was performed to explore the effects of the sound environment on perceived spaciousness in architecture. 30 subjects were exposed to 96 audio-visual stimuli and asked to evaluate their perceived spaciousness and preference for sound environment, using a 9-point verbal scale. The results showed that perceived spaciousness was significantly influenced by subjects? preference for sound environment, sound type and the reverberation time of the space, and the influence mechanism was not relevant to the spatial authenticity (visual scale cues). The more preference the sound environment was, the more spacious the space was perceived. Increasing reverberation time was also helpful to increase perceived spaciousness of a space, though this phenomenon was only apparent in medium-size spaces. These findings would possibly provide practical guidance to architectural designs.
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