Acustic of University lecture halls: a Design Proposal for Palazzo Malvezzi - Campeggi.

An aspect often overlooked although essential for the learning process is a good speech intelligibility and the acoustic comfort of school classrooms in general. The other design issues, such as lighting, temperature control, environmental appeal, usually take precedence because they are more visible and closer to a tactile sensitivity. But it should be noted how the lack of a single comfort factor substantially affects the feeling of overall discomfort by nullifying the success of the other instances. A good acoustics becomes particularly hard to achieve in the context of the Italian historical heritage rehabilitated for educational purposes. Thanks to the opening of the restoration site of Palazzo Malvezzi-Campeggi, seat of the Law School in the historic city center of Bologna, it was possible to inquire this aspect and to actively contribute in the renewal proposal. From acoustic measurements of nine lecture halls the inadequacy of the present state has been proven. It follows how passive and active acoustic treatments are essential to ensure a good comfort for students, in order to encourage learning and consequently increase school performance. The proposals was developed in collaboration with the lighting design, not treated here. Laboratory measurements carried out in a controlled environment were conducted to support the effectiveness of the passive treatments, while predictive methods allowed to verify design performances

Predicting and auralizing acoustics in classrooms

Although classrooms have fairly simple geometries, this type of room is known to cause problems when trying to predict their acoustics using room acoustics computer modeling. Some typical features from a room acoustics point of view are: Parallel walls, low ceilings (the rooms are flat), uneven distribution of absorption, and most of the floor being covered with furniture which at long distances act as scattering elements, and at short distance provide strong specular components. The importance of diffraction and scattering is illustrated in numbers and by means of auralization, using ODEON 8 Beta