Hi there.

I am a PhD Student at The University of Melbourne where I teach and try my darndest to contribute to research about
architectural acoustics. 

As part of this (optimistically) 3.5-year committed relationship with my desk, I decided to start this blog. My main goal is not to educate you (though hopefully, you might learn something), but as a way to bully myself into writing something somewhat cohesively that someone might actually read. This first series of entries will be a stream of consciousness where I try and outline my main arguments as a way to structure my lit review. I'm sure critical errors will (again, optimistically) be corrected down the line as this research progresses, and I will endeavour to edit these and/or add notes for revision later.

So the main problem I'm trying to deal with is that contemporary architectural design does not incorporate acoustics very well if at all, and unfortunately approaches to acoustic design are somewhat inaccessible.

So how do we go about addressing these problems? First, I will need to set the scene in the 19th Century with a tale of two halls that outlines some early approaches to architectural acoustics. However, it was in the 20th century that we saw the emergence of two titans who defined (in the first's case, quite literally) modern architectural acoustics - the Paul Morphy and Wilhelm Steinitz of acoustics*. The first was Wallace Clement Sabine who derived the equation for reverberation time and established qualitative acoustics, and the second was Leo Beranek, who connected qualitative and quantitative acoustics. Together, this formed the basis of how we measure and judge acoustic quality.

"Ok, but how does this help us with Architectural Acoustic Design?" I hear you ask. Well, spoiler warning: It kind of doesn't. Still, there may be new opportunities to examine and develop new methods for how architects approach acoustic design.