Designing for the Ears:
How Natural Soundscapes can Create Healthier, More Impactful Buildings

Designers understand the benefits of bringing natural light and natural analogues indoors, but did you know that natural sound can be used to create healthier and more engaging environments too? Complaints about noise are top of the list in most shared commercial buildings. Some spaces are distracting, others lack privacy. Some are eerily quiet, while others are too loud.

Not all sound is bad, though. Some sounds are incredibly beneficial for human health and performance. Soundscaping is the act of bringing these beneficial sounds indoors to support building users. This course will teach the fundamentals of the science of sound – how and why sound affects people. It will review the key considerations in soundscaping so that participants are able to formulate their own high-level designs. And it will explore the relationship between sight and sound, enabling designers to create more impactful spaces. The course is relevant to practitioners interested in topics such as wellbeing, biophilic design, neurodiversity and sensory design.

• Recognize how people’s responses to sound in the modern built environment are rooted in human evolutionary experiences in nature.
• Identify multiple common noise-related issues in shared buildings.
• Identify the health benefits of biophilic sound.
• Create soundscaping designs to support different activities in shared buildings.
• Create soundscaping designs to support different people and neurodiversities in shared buildings.
• Use sound as a tool to amplify visual designs.