World Quietest Room

Sometimes, we need a getaway from our hustle bustle life in city. People normally will choose some quiet and tranquil places to loosen up, but do anyone ever thought of a space that is so quiet until you can hear your own heartbeat or the sound of your blood streaming in your body? In this everything-could-possibly-happened-world of ours, there is indeed a world quietest room which could drive you insane or at least make you hallucinate.

Inside the world's quietest room

The sound level of an average anechoic chamber is only around 30 decibels, but this Guinnes World Record quietest room in Orfield Labs, Minneapolis is having -9 decibels of sound level in the room, according to MPR News. Threshold of human hearing starts from 0 decibel and imagine you are trapped in a room with -9 decibels sound level? Definitely will go crazy after sometime. According to the experiment, the longest a person has ever spent alone in the chamber is 45 minutes as human start to hallucinate as the surrounding is too quiet.

Total Silence Drives You Crazy

Any way, just for your information, the world quietest room is built not for entertainment or just to break record. Orfield Labs built and uses this anechoic chamber to test the noise levels of various products such as LED lights, medical equipment and so on. "But watch out: it could easily become a place to drive people mad." - News Discovery

Quietest Place on Earth Gives Sailor Peace

*Attention!* Check this link which is about Charlie who produce the podcast Composer Quest (not the point though). But this guy has a great blog sharing his experiences and knowledge about music composition, production, sound and psychology that might makes you 'Wow' about facts that you might not know earlier. And pss.. he had already visited the quietest chamber!

Note: Anechoic chamber (an-echoic meaning non-echoing/echo-free) is a room designed to completely absorb reflections of either sound or electromagnetic waves. They are also insulated from exterior sources of noise. The combination of both aspects means they simulate a quiet open-space of infinite dimension, which is useful when exterior influences would otherwise give false results. Source by wikipedia

GBI Rating System

Any way, enough for the explanation and opinions about phenomenology in architecture, let's focus on the other related topic of mine, which is the Green Architecture. There are a few types of Green Architecture standards and certification systems around the world, for example the first green building rating system in U.K which established in the 1990s - Building Research Establishment's Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating systems which is established by U.S Green Building Council in the year 2000. For Malaysia, Green Building rating system was introduced as Green Building Index (GBI) during January 3rd, 2009 at the Green Design Forum held at the Kuala Lumpur Conventional Centre.

Without further ado, let's proceed with the criteria of Indoor Environmental Quality based on Green Building Index. GBI is separated into few categories as below (click the picture to enlarge): 

Note:
NRNC – Non-Residential New Construction | RNC – Residential New Construction | NREB – Non-Residential Existing Building | INC – Industrial New Construction | IEB – Industrial Existing Building
Source: GREENBUILDINGINDEX Sdn. Bhd.
Picture by: penangmonthly.com

And whereby, this mean that there are different criteria and requirements of Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) for different types of buildings that I need to research on. But at the end of the day, I will compile with other researches regarding criteria of good IEQ for a better definition and understanding toward IEQ.

Below are 2 rating systems of GBI for the categories of Non-Residential Existing Building (NREB) and Residential New Construction (RNC) along with a design reference guide for RNC for my research.

GBI NREB Non-Residential Existing Building Tool V1.1 Final

GBI RNC Residential Tool V2.0 Final

GBI Design Reference Guide - Residential New Construction (RNC) V3.0

Had been flipping through pages of Ken Yeang's Ecodesign: A Manual for Ecological Design during my journey of trying to sort out the definition of good IEQ. In the manual, he stated that human thermal comfort zones are usually between 18°C and 24°C, but this varies depending on the relative humidity, which should remain between 30 and 65%.

Note: Relative humidity is a measure of the amount of water vapour in the air, of which 100% being saturated air. So within the above general limit (30-65%), the higher the relative humidity, thus, the lower air temperature required for humans to feel comfortable. 

He also mentioned something that broadens my narrow minded seaweed brain that of which the thermal comfort is not just about air temperatures and temperature gradients, radiant temperature, air movement and ambient water vapour pressure, but also about the amount of clothing worn by the occupants and the occupants' level of activity. 

Any way, I will wrap this post up with an interesting news regarding Walkie Talkie City skyscraper (also being renamed as Walkie Scorhie) in London that had caused trouble to the environment around the building due to its design. In a nutshell, designing an architecture is not an easy job as we need to foresee and predict the outcome of our design in order to prevent harm to the environment surrounding. Enjoy the post :)

8 SUBCONSCIOUS MISTAKES OUR BRAINS MAKE EVERY DAY

8 SUBCONSCIOUS MISTAKES OUR BRAINS MAKE EVERY DAY--AND HOW TO AVOID THEM

Came across this interesting article in the internet and makes me ponder, how many of these subconscious mistakes our brains make takes part when we are exploring a space? And how these leads to influence our judgement and the emotion aroused? Thus, will these subconscious mistakes influence the definition of phenomenology in architecture of each individual?

All these perceptions and experiences toward a space are vary from different individual as their cultural backgrounds, surrounding environments and other factors are different. Japanese author Jun'ichirō Tanizaki showed an excellent example of the influence of different cultural backgrounds toward the experiences of architectural space in his work – In Praise of Shadows. This thought had led to the confusion of people whether an architect is actually able to create contextually precise experiences for others or they are just simply project his self-interest into others? 

Untitled

"Architectural psychology can be described as a branch of environmental or ecological psychology. This deals with the psychological processes of the interaction between man and his environment, as for example spatial perception, spatial thinking, orientation behaviour, or spatial experience, territorial behaviour, living requirements and satisfaction, local identity."  

                                                                            - Oberascher, Leonhard http://leoncolor.com

Found this interesting websites regarding environmental psychology. It was stated there, 

"Understanding principles about environmental psychology will help architects to design with greater awareness."

but problem is, how many people among us are being aware about the existence of environmental psychology? and let's say you do, how are you going to imply that into your design? then say that you did imply, there will still be a minor group who disagree with your approach. Why? Because design is a very subjective thing. It can be anything to someone and nothing to anyone. 

Any way, let's put aside this judgmental issues aside and back to my topic. Found a new analogy for phenomenology in architecture for further understanding regarding it. Hmm..I guess phenomenology in architecture can put in this way:

Phenomenology in architecture = A restaurant

Situation 1: A creepy restaurant (due to bad light ventilation) + bad odor + awful food + dust everywhere + construction undergoing at next door

Situation 2: A comfortable restaurant (good light ventilation) + aromatic smell of coffee + peaceful surrounding + comfy seats

Well I guess it's pretty obvious which is the good and which is the bad one right? This is due to the first situation puts you into a negative surrounding which evoked the negative senses and emotions in you and leads to a negative memory for you of the place. On the other hand, Situation 2 pretty much a 'heaven-like', ideal places for you to enjoy your meal. Definitely you'll pick situation 2 for your most preferred restaurant right?

Last but not least, came across this article HERE debating the importance of tactile perception in an architecture during the search of my case studies. It introduces quite some interesting findings and evidence of the importance of tactile perception and I found them quite interesting. Hope you can have a good read through the article and share with me what is your opinion about that?

Some random thoughts on my blindfolded journey to seek for correct path

Human has evolved to be a highly visual dominant living creature nowadays. From head to toes; daily products to architectures; each and everything relates or surrounds us will definitely be some designers' masterpieces. For muggles in the sense of design professions, designers are people who beautify things. But for us who are involved in designing industries, are we? 

Not to offend anyone here, but I personally walking in the shoes of designers and being surrounded by friends and mates engage in this design industries experience that almost all of us judge the best of our works in the sense of the visual impact rather than any other factors (agree?). Most of us are trying to 'borrow' some inspiration from the current trend/ masterpieces of starchitects and at here, I have to admit that I am one of these starchitect-wanna-bes too. But what I wanted to convey is we human enjoyed visual sensation so much that we often left out other senses that we own. 

In fact, there are so many senses we as a living creature own which are able to categorize into different fields such as the external senses which consist of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, internal senses (common sense, imaginative sense, estimative sense and sense memory) and last but not least, appetitive senses (love, joy, happiness, desire and other emotional impressions). From a senior's dissertation, she mentioned that Banaag stated that we discover knowledge from the information sensed by our senses and therefore, the more senses are triggered, the deeper the intellectual understanding appear.

For example, watching some fearsome movies such as the Conjuring or comedy like the Internship (which I rather prefer compare to thriller movies) gives a bigger impact to us rather than watching some boring educational clips right? This is due to the emotions triggered while we are watching which will leave the trail behind for sometimes before they gone. And I guess that is how an architecture should influence us instead of just plainly being fascinated by its bombastic visual impact. 

Whereas indoor environmental quality is one of the part in green architecture rating system which consist of few aspects such as encourage natural light and air ventilation, usage of low-emitting materials and achieving the level of thermal comfort. Yet first and foremost, the ultimate goal for this indoor environmental quality is to uplift the comfortableness and quality of living. Nevertheless, the indoor environmental quality in green architectures are still at the level of educational clips in video industries. And then, it hits me. Why not upgrading educational clips and make it more interesting which up to the level of movie industries? Won't that made educational clips any less boring and more alluring? Same goes to indoor environmental quality. Why not incorporate it which the philosophy of phenomenology in architecture? Won't it be a boost point to achieve the goal of indoor environmental quality?