School of Design | Graduate Interior Design
Students: Yiming Zhang, He Xu, Yan Huang
Faculty: Michael Zuckerman
Since this space is fenced on both sides, there is no sound insulation, resulting in passers-by upstairs being able to hear the sound of the subway passing from downstairs, while passengers downstairs can hear the noise of the performers upstairs as well as passers-by, resulting in the largest noise index in the area. Therefore, we designed an arch-shaped structure for the corridor, due to the wrapping of this structure the noise generated by the performers and the subway is isolated better.
The project involves interfering with the spatial environment of the subway corridor to improve the experience of all the passengers, passers-by and performers/musicians. The design looks into changing materials, remodeling the space, and adding flexible retractable devices to effectively reduce the transmission of noise and reverberation in the subway station.
An arch-shaped structure is a retractable metal frame with a geometric membrane. The structure is made keeping in mind the dimensions of the subway corridor and is placed in the middle, the design is composed of yellowish floor tiles and green I-beams that also allow enough space for pedestrians to walk and for musicians to play their instruments.
Acoustic wall and spherical acoustic silo
The structure consists of two layers, the inner layer is made up of polyester soundproofing acoustic panels and use a resilient channel to fix the panels to the original wall. This material has many advantages, it is waterproof, easy to install, requires no additional manual maintenance and most importantly has a powerful sound absorption capacity. The outer layer is made of a perforated metal plate with an undulating shape that spreads the noise in all directions and not just in one direction. The cavities and voids can effectively transmit noise into the back of the polyester soundproofing acoustic panel, reducing the transmission of noise in the environment.
A spherical acoustic silo is specifically for the performers because the spherical structure is better at reflecting the sound to the source. Therefore, it is beneficial to isolate the noise generated by the performer. The eggshell-shaped structure consists of a metal frame and a translucent white film which is placed on a yellowish floor tile in the center of a subway corridor. To the left of the arch is a dark green column and an entrance to the lower subway line, the height of the arch is flush with the beam and the width is slightly less than the distance between the two dark green columns. Inside the arch is someone playing the guitar while some people are watching.
It is a subway corridor space with yellowish floor tiles, dark green columns arranged in the middlemost beam, and five beams above. The left and right walls of the corridor are geometrically covered by wedge-shaped metal panels with small holes to form waves on the walls.
1. The figure is a section of a subway corridor, the diagonal line indicates the cross-section, you can see the columns and pillars have a flared and arched structure, the red arrow is a representation of the reflective folding between the beam and the arched structure indicating the subway noise, while the internal repeated folding forward of the blue line indicates the sound of pedestrians walking inside the arch as well as the sound of the instrument. This figure shows that the sound of the subway is effectively attenuated in the corridor.
2. The schematic shows an eggshell-shaped structure with geometric forms of lines and a silhouette of a person singing in the middle of the structure. The red dotted lines with arrows in the diagram emanates from the mouth of the person in the middle and then reflects off the arch-shaped structure to the ground, indicating that the sound can be attenuated by the circular sound field.
3. The figure represents a magnified view of the eggshell structure and the material schematic, the leftmost is the placement of the structure, and the upper left corner of the figure is a square with arrows and many parallel lines, representing the entrance to the lower level of the subway. The middle figure represents another enlarged view of the structure, its index is made out of metal, the middle film is a translucent acoustic panel and the material used for the floor is rubber.
4. This diagram shows the acoustic schematic of a folding wall with a space trim with geometric shapes in the left view. The red dashed lines with arrows indicate the sound, and these lines disperse into smaller red dashed lines after touching the geometrically shaped finish. The right view shows the surface of the finish with many small dots, indicating perforated metal panels, and the red dashed lines reflect only a small number of dashed lines after contact with the finish. Both figures indicate the dispersion and absorption of sound by the finish.
5. The diagram shows the material and structure used for the folding wall, the middle is an enlarged view of the folding wall, the outermost layer of the geometric structure is indexed by the material porous aluminum Sheet, and the middle rectangular structure with a dot is made of dense polyester soundproofing acoustic panels, and the bottom cross-shaped structure is a metal frame for fixing on the wall, which is composed of a resilient channel.