Acoustics increasingly shapes everyday life through sound-aware design choices

Evidence

The need to combine both these aspects of this knowledge to achieve useful results, and the diversity of applications are what make this subject so exciting! As we write, acoustics is being applied to many more areas that affect our everyday life directly, for example the noise caused by wind farms, acoustic screening between individual working spaces in open office areas, and the design of urban public spaces that not only look nice but also sound good. Our hearing is one of our most precious senses, and it good to see that, as we become more technologically sophisticated, we are coming to realize that, for our human existence, sound really matters! — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 2678

Categorization

• SEED: An essay angle: ‘designing for the ear’ — how wind farms, open-plan offices, and public squares are now acoustically engineered, not just visually designed.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing acoustic-design interests (urban soundscapes, noise as health issue) and generalizes the book’s applications theme.