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TED Talks UWE, The Innovative Attitude – The Challenges of Being too Clever

29th January 2018Talks/ Conferences

TED talks, always inspiring to listen to, and here’s Ze’s from MACH Acoustics, presented in the series of The Innovative Attitude back in January 2016. He entitled it “The Challenges of Being too Clever” and as well as providing an insight into what it’s actually like to identify a problem area, research and find solutions, this talk explains what it’s like in practise to get your idea across to an audience of architects, contractors and engineers who up until now had no idea that their challenges could just be overcome.

This presentation gives a snap shot of MACH’s CPD style too – heavy enough on the engineering whilst being accessible to those who need and want to understand acoustics but who don’t specialise in it. It makes us start appreciating sounds, environments and how much we take our hearing for granted without paying it that much attention. It also explains how we hear things and how this affects us in our work and non working lives – ears and sound have a big part to play in our well being.

TED Talks UWE, The Innovative Attitude - The Challenges of Being too Clever

Click on the link below to play the talk (not the image above).

https://lnkd.in/d5-rcr7

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New suite of CPDs available – transfering knowledge for better design solutions

29th January 2018Acoustic Design, CPDs

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Bristol Grammar School – new Performing Arts Centre inspires students

29th January 2018Acoustic Design, Talks/ Conferences

Following on from MACH Acoustics’ involvement with Bristol Grammar Schools Performing Arts Centre, Max Reynolds was invited to speak at a workshop at the school featuring this interesting project . The workshop saw participation from students, parents and industry professionals alike and the collaboration made it a special event – how inspiring for the 6^thformers to hear first hand about how their very own performing arts centre came to being!

Note from this image the challenges of noise pollution coming from numerous sources

And from this image, the plan of the site and the orientation of the building

The new design of the space was the main theme, and their careers talk drew on these translatable life skills – encompassing all disciplines used in the construction industry. Max went on to give some insights into his own career as an acoustic consultant and no doubt in a few years to come MACH Acoustics will be able to gain from the new generation of enthused acousticians and engineers.

Posted by IT MACH

Green Register Bite Size Session – The Future of Windows

29th January 2018Window Design

Bite-Size Session: The Future of Windows – a sustainable approach to acoustic design – Bristol

Find out how to take a green, forward thinking approach to all aspects of building acoustics including window design – this talk takes place on May 12th in Bristol and has been commissioned by the Green Register.

In this bite size session, Ze Nunes, founder of Bristol based MACH Acoustics will present some lessons learned from lecturing & studying at the University of Bath (MSc in Sustainable Architecture and Phd “In the Visualisation of Sound”). Ze has recently published two hugely significant books ‘Sustainable Acoustics’ and ‘The Future of Windows’. Signed copies of both books will be available subject to printing dates being achieved.

Ze will demonstrate how to take a green, forward thinking approach to all aspects of building acoustics including window design. Best practice, the latest data, as well as useful ‘sustainable rules of thumb‘ are included in this presentation as well as an introduction into MACH Acoustics’ Web Based Design Tools, showing how best to position a building on site, how to minimise levels of embodied energy and select partitions between rooms.

Civic Trust Awards Win for Brighton College, Boarding House

29th January 2018Awards

A win in the Civic Trust Awards for the Boading House, this project provides new boarding accommodation as part of a building programme to improve facilities for Brighton College pupils. The self-contained three and four-storey boarding house adjacent to the Grade II listed Dawson House forms a new eastern edge to the campus and completes the quadrangle envisaged by Thomas Graham Jackson in 1884.

The building contains a mix of school facilities for the College’s own use, related to student and staff accommodation and pastoral care. Designed to be clearly contemporary in construction detail but contextual in material, massing and form, interconnected double height spaces create a surprising internal spatial arrangement in contrast to the regular rhythm of the facades expressing the bedroom modules. Inspired by its Venetian Gothic neighbours, the new facade design of the Boarding House is composed in layers. The solid inner leaf of the external walls, with its window apertures, provides the structural and environmental enclosure; this is the ‘modern functional building’. A relatively thin outer layer comprises the masonry layer cladding of either flint or brickwork. A filigree of fine metalwork linings, like the terracotta (or stone) mullions of the 19th Century windows, partially conceals the window frames and vent panels.

Ze Nunes, Director of MACH Acoustics says of the architect “it’s always a pleasure supporting Allies and Morrison, we find them engaging to work with and as usual they create something truly impressive.”

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Childs’ play “Slinky” teaches us Sound Visualisation

29th January 2018Visualising Sound

The Slinky (toy) has helped MACH Acoustics visualise sound which, ultimately, has enabled us to explain why one window type behaves differently to another.

One of the reasons why we see so few genuinely low carbon buildings is because hugely complex acoustics are involved in creating these buildings. In addition, design teams do not instinctively bring acoustics into the mix when planning ventilation and it is an area often overlooked. However, getting to grips with this element of building design is critical. At MACH we have used FDTD mathematics to create some incredible software that enables us to visualise sound. We believe that being able to visualise sound will facilitate better understanding of the complexities associated with the acoustic design of say, a window. More importantly however, design teams will intuitively grasp the importance of key design changes, leading to the whole team providing better, more sustainable buildings. Now a fairly cool ‘retro’ toy, the Slinky has been our inspiration in visualising sound waves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SLUT5gQ6lk

One of the problems with the above model is that there are few Slinkies involved and so information is minimal. It isn’t viable to tie hundreds of these units together to provide a more representative way in which sound travels around the ventilation systems of low carbon buildings – so we turned to mathematics to create a more representative wave model.

The image above shows how this model has been formed. The dots represent the movement along the Slinky that have been tied together with a string of differential equations, (see red connection points). This allows for a similar Slinky model to be formed.

However, this is still a 1D model as the dots only move in a line, and the image is pixelated. So we have added transversal differential equations between each of the cells/dots, and increased the number of cells by a factor of around 1,000. The results are amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK1-T4RWVuc

The above model clearly shows the propagation of sound in 2D (please note we also now have a 3D model) and the effects of this wave reflecting off a structure. The most important aspect of this model is that it demonstrates how sound bends around this object. This bending, known as diffraction, is the reason why we often hear a sound source that we cannot see. Diffraction is possibly the most critical component in understanding the passage of sound through open windows.

Thanks to the Slinky, we are able to illustrate how sound behaves, and show you how different window types effect the acoustic performance of a building. Demonstrating why one window type behaves differently to another is a giant step towards understanding the powerful link between acoustics and low carbon building design. Maths, physics and playing with toys give us all the answers – more beautiful buildings await.

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Sustainability – time for a deeper understanding

29th January 2018Sustainable Acoustics

We all use the word “Sustainable” but is our general over use of the on trend word more of a hindrance now to those who truly practise what we preach – and do we really understand it in it’s purest concept? Max Reynolds explains:

What Is Sustainable Development?

There are many different ways of defining sustainable and it is been said that there are over 200 definitions of sustainable development alone.

The United Nations in 1987 described sustainable development as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” and this perhaps outlines what it should mean to us within the construction industry.

A common model for understanding sustainability is the “three pillars model” which was first introduced during the 2005 World summit on social development as a way of visualising the key components of sustainable development. This is a useful image as it provides us with a clear visualisation of the balancing required and that for truly sustainable development we need to address all three.

Three Pillars Of Sustainability

Whilst the three-pillar model is a useful tool for simplifying and visualising sustainability, it is slightly misleading in that it implies that the weighting between the pillars is equal, but as environmental ecologist Herman Daly sates “What use is a sawmill without a forest”.

The environmental component should be the main focus as everything else depends upon the environment. Similarly economic issues are a sub-component of social issues, so economic sits within the social component. Therefore we should consider adopting an updated approach to this model in the form of the “egg of sustainability” – see diagram below

Buildings should be focussing on minimising their negative environmental impact and it is up to us as designers to find solutions that work socially and economically.

Making sustainable solutions work socially revolves around opening people’s minds to new ideas and approaches. As humans, we are naturally sceptical and resistant to change, but this is the stage that we are currently at as the word “sustainable” is becoming more of a “buzz word” and the increasing global awareness is a key driver. A perfect example of that demonstrates we are on the right path is the recent Paris climate change agreement.

In addressing the environmental and social aspects of sustainability, one would hope this would be sufficient to address any economic issues associated with sustainable buildings, by reshaping the way we approach building design, by finding simple solutions that are economically viable.

As designers we have a key role to play in our journey down this road and it is down to us to be the driving force behind new ways of thinking and challenging traditional approaches because as Robert Swan so eloquently put it “The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.”

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Bath University “The Hive” plays a part in The Future of Windows

29th January 2018Window Design

The HIVE is a £1 million ground-breaking building project designed to support research into construction materials and is the first building project being developed at the Building Research Park. A University of Bath initiative, the HIVE is a natural coupling for MACH Acoustics to work hand in hand with as MACH exploors and progresses its work on The Future of Windows.

Over the past months Andrew, Ze, Yang from MACH have investigated various facades and window configurations, taken measurements and surveys and used this for their research. As Andrew says of this recent work: “Without this real life situation to investigate bold concepts in a cost effective manor we would not be able to validate our new façade modelling techniques. This will in the future provide the confidence to our clients that we can provide a fast evolving and robust façade scheme design such to incorporate natural ventilation into more buildings on noisy sites”.

For further information about The Hive use the following link:

http://www.bath.ac.uk/research/centres/brp/

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The Bristol Hum – BBC on the case again

29th January 2018Breakout Spaces

The decades-long search for the Bristol Hum

The Bristol Hum – a mysterious low-level noise that only some in the city can hear – is back in the headlines on the BBC. But did it ever go away? As far back as April 1980, Bristol’s environmental health officers were using noise monitoring equipment to try to track down the source. More than 100 complaints were logged, according to the archive from April 1980 and the BBC Points West records.

Now in the latest flury of interest, the BBC has been able to uncover further explanations, including one from MACH Acoustics’ Director Ze Nunes – who tells us hearing can be subjective and not a black and white matter.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35344544

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Why architects need to use their ears: TED Talk by Julian Treasure

29th January 2018Talks/ Conferences

At MACH Acoustics this is just the kind of talk we’re interested in – Julian’s phenomenal TED Talk in 2012 was well received with architects, contractor and engineers alike.

“Because of poor acoustics, students in classrooms miss 50 percent of what their teachers say and patients in hospitals have trouble sleeping because they continually feel stressed”. Julian Treasure sounds a call to action for designers to pay attention to the “invisible architecture” of sound.

Please enjoy this talk for yourselves:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5nbWUOc9tY

Arch Daily wrote about this presentation, “In architecture we talk about space and form. We talk about experience and meaning. All of these qualities are inextricably the sensory experience of light, touch, smell and sound. Sound expert Julian Treasure asks architects to consider designing for our ears, citing that the quality of the acoustics of a space affect us physiologically, socially, psychologically and behaviourally”.

MACH’s Ze Nunes will give a talk on Saturday 23rd January as part of the UWE Bristol series this year. Taking “The Challenges of Being Too Clever” as a title and featuring The Future of Windows he will explore how reasearch has led his innovative mind to this new way of working and overcoming age old acoustic challenges with clever engineering and brutal maths. See the previous blog entry for further information.

Bite-Size Session: The Future of Windows – a sustainable approach to acoustic design – Bristol

Three Pillars Of Sustainability

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