TABLE OF CONTENTS Sound is a series of pressure variations that move through an elastic medium, such as air. The sound's alternating compressions and rarefactions may be far apart (low-pitched), close together (high-pitched), tall (loud), or short (soft). These invisible waves can turn the air they usually travel through into a sonar landscape that is as ecstatic or unbearable as any visual landscape. Indeed, otherwise beautiful architecture can be made unbearable by a small oversight in acoustic design.
Acoustic design is different from the other disciplines, because:
Acoustics is more comprehensive than the other disciplines. Quantifying a sound requires analysis of a greater variety of properties as a prerequisite to effective design, and successful design often depends on the unitary quality of a total assembly and not by adding up the individual qualities of each separate part. For example, when designing a beam, if you make the beam safe in shear, safe in bending, safe in deflection, etc. according to each of the Eight Stresses, you can be sure the whole beam will be safe; but in acoustic design you can't just take the best kind of one component, the best aspect of another, the best part of another, etc., then put them all together with the sureness of knowledge that you've come up with the best solution-because often you haven't.
Acoustics is invisible. You can put your hand on a beam, in water, around a wire or light fixture. But air? In our sight-dominant society, such ethereality fosters...
