But doing acoustics right, it turns out, can be really expensive.
Mitigating the kind of noise restaurants can create isn't expensive. There's an off the shelf engineered solution that's been around for almost 70 years. Acoustic ceiling tiles. Restaurants are loud because acoustic ceiling tiles are out of fashion even though significantly less expensive than hard surfaces and exposed building services+structure if painted.[1] Though carpeting and upholstery help, acoustic treatment of the ceiling is the first line of noise mitigation. [2]
[1]: Among the most costly finishes are services and structures fabricated to aesthetic criteria.
[2]: The stylistic trend away from acoustic ceiling tile, carpets, and upholstery further erodes acoustic privacy in open offices.
1. Just adding absorption to the ceiling isn't enough - absorption on the ceilings help kill ceiling reflections, but you still need to deal with reflections from the floor, walls and various surfaces. Absorption works best if it is distributed around around the room.
2. In addition to being unattractive, another reason acoustic ceiling tiles aren't popular is that they are difficult to clean compared to smooth, hard surfaces. There are acoustic surface finishes from brands like Pyrok and BASWA that can be cleaned with industrial cleaners, but those finishes are expensive to install.
Adding ceiling tiles to the ceiling goes a long way. It may or may not be enough depending on what enough is. I mean, and as I suspect you know, masking is also important and both masking and absorption need to be tuned to specific human relevant frequencies in the acoustic environment. Kitchens are the critical restaurant ceilings in terms of cleaning. Both USG and Armstrong make cleanable ceiling tiles suitable for kitchens with many decades of successful performance across many restaurant installations. Less exotic tiles (if cleanable tiles are exotic) also have proven performance in dining and other areas. The proven performance is what made ceiling tile a ubiquitous default across building types...
...anyway, tiles outperform what most designers are capable of coming up with on their own and do so with little or no consideration on the designer's part. Loud restaurants largely reflect little or no consideration in the face of changing fashions. Then again, the restaurant business is so iffy that careful attention to acoustics is probably premature optimization. In five years it won't matter because the restaurant will be gone.
That's my point - often just treating the reflections form the ceiling alone isn't enough, you need to stop the reflections from other surfaces as well.
Other reflections may be desirable as masking noise or to create a particular ambiance. Or not. That's part of the experiential difference between a lively bistro and a bordello style steak house.
And it works SOOO well! My (for 25 years) favorite restaurant was setup in a former horse butchery. Tiles all over the place. In my 20s and 30s the echo was not much of a problem, late 40's it became harder for me to distinguish sounds and voices.
Since much of the clientele aged with me, the owner one day decided to have a professional company place the acoustic ceiling tiles: it was breath taking wholesome.
Not ugly (it integrated nicely with the curved ceiling) and incredibly effective. Since then, I have no patience or tolerance for restaurants & bars that echo.
Meeting aesthetic criteria may be non-negotiable, particularly in a hospitality context. So it is probably on top of those that acoustics needs to be addressed.
Acoustic ceiling tile is pretty horrible from an interior design perspective...
When my previous university built a new eatery, the architects decided to put vertical acoustic "blade" tiles on the ceiling. Those actually fitted the architecture of the entire building quite nicely (see [1, 2] for photos), and the effect on the acoustics compared to the previous building (with a similarly high concrete ceiling) was enormous. It was suddenly possible to have long conversations with a relatively large group of people over lunch without growing tired after a few minutes.
I figure that you could use similar, aesthetically pleasing (e.g., coloured) elements in a restaurant setting.
Those are blades, and they exist within the cloud family. I also think they look attractive, but we've gotten a lot of pushback from architects when we've tried to recommend them, excuses have included interference with lighting and sprinkler systems (I'm not an architect so I don't know how valid those concerns really are) and cost.
As with most anything, it's probably easier to incorporate them into a new design from the start then to fit them into an existing space that wasn't designed to accommodate them.
+1; the open plan office in which I work has something like that (only less... symmetrical?) hanging from the ceiling. it helps, compared to other open spaces I've been in, and you can still see the ductwork, power and ethernet. They also have those compressed cotton acoustical panels on the wall behind a lattice of 2x4s, and some kind of grey insulating spray that covers the actual ceiling and I beams.
I mean, it's still worse than a cube farm under a conventional acoustical tiled ceiling, but it is a hell of a lot better than nothing, and conforms to the visual standards of the day, (or at least i think it does; It was built out very recently.)
Are those just black tiles or are they black noise reduction tiles? I don't see any indication of the later. Is vinyl a common material for noise reduction?
Probably! (Probably not that much more, though.) But so do comfortable chairs, nice tablecloths, and good ingredients. (And the reclaimed wood and industrial fixtures everyone's using...)
The way architects think, it's considered more convincing to use materials honestly than to dress them up or conceal them. So painting or otherwise decorating acoustic tiles is not an attractive option. The exposed ductwork thing is about not concealing (potentially messy) services. It's not just a fashion, it's a kind of moral imperative, that those services should be neat and orderly, not a chaotic mess concealed by a dropped ceiling...
> The way architects think, it's considered more convincing to use materials honestly than to dress them up or conceal them
That's not the way that architects think, it's a common current design fashion (and what we are discussing is interior design, not really architecture.)
> So painting or otherwise decorating acoustic tiles is not an attractive option.
It's absolutely an attractive option if naked elements don't support the ambience the occupant of the space wants. Which is why, despite the current popularity of the bare-services look, it is far from universal even in current (re)designs of spaces.
> The exposed ductwork thing is about not concealing (potentially messy) services.
Yes, and that design trend is fairly recent, especially in it's application to dining establishments.
> It's not just a fashion,
Yes, it is.
> it's a kind of moral imperative,
That's not as much of a difference as you seem to think: morality is in a very real sense just behavioral aesthetics; the broad outlines of morality may be fairly slow preferences to change, but you can find fairly slow to change elements in most domains of aesthetic. The attractiveness of the raw industrial look in interior design, however, is not among them, no matter how one might dress it up in language of morality.
> > The way architects think, it's considered more convincing to use materials honestly than to dress them up or conceal them
> That's not the way that architects think, it's a common current design fashion (and what we are discussing is interior design, not really architecture.)
It is practically the definition of being an architect to be concerned with truth to materials. No architect wants to be accused of designing paper-thin stage sets, dishonest buildings, things that don't actually work. It's important to distinguish (because this is a distinction that's very important in architectural culture) between the essential structure/function of a building, and features that are merely styling/cladding. The latter are to be avoided. This goes back to the beginning of architecture: a good building is decorated construction, not constructed decoration. Even those architects among the postmodernists who are worth seriously considering played by these rules. (There might be a few perverse PoMo exceptions)
An interior designer can't specify the details of exposed services, so this isn't really part of interior design (and anyway the idea of having exposed services comes from architecture) any more than a model holding an iPhone on the catwalk is part of fashion design.
> > So painting or otherwise decorating acoustic tiles is not an attractive option.
> It's absolutely an attractive option if naked elements don't support the ambience the occupant of the space wants. Which is why, despite the current popularity of the bare-services look, it is far from universal even in current (re)designs of spaces.
I meant attractive to architects.
> > The exposed ductwork thing is about not concealing (potentially messy) services.
> Yes, and that design trend is fairly recent, especially in it's application to dining establishments.
The specific "exposed services" trend is hot right now, but the idea of honest construction, truth to materials, form follows function, etc., really dates to the late 19th C. William Morris saw the shoddiness of mass-produced items (e.g. furniture) and called for a return to honest, simple, direct construction. Adolf Loos wrote about the redundancy of ornament, and the falseness of cladding (specifically, of making a material appear to be something it was not). The modern movement came out of an idea that that the customary, superficial, imitative forms of elaborate 19th C architecture could be replaced by a natural geometric simplicity. As Louis Sullivan said in 1892:
‘I should say that it would be greatly for the aesthetic good if we should refrain entirely from the use of ornament for a period of years, in order that our thoughts might concentrate acutely upon the production of building well formed and comely in the nude. We should thus perforce eschew many undesirable things, and learn by contrast how effective it is to think in a natural, vigorous and wholesome way. This step taken, we might safely inquire to what extent, a decorative application of ornament would enhance the beauty of our structures-what new charm it would give them.’
Exposed services, which have been a thing since the 50s, coming after the intentional rawness of brutalism (for example, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowellism), are just an iteration of this impulse. For architects, carefully assembled "naked" services express and celebrate this natural honesty, functionality and directness. It's arguably an unjustified extra expense to get the services "right" (neat and tidy), but on the other hand, there's the long-standing traditional Medieval idea that even things that are out of public view will be seen by God, so they should be properly attended to anyway. This principle is a matter of thoroughness, probity and ethics.
> > It's not just a fashion,
> Yes, it is.
If I'd said "it's not a fashion", I'd have been asking to be corrected. But I said "it's not just a fashion", which is a very generous and weak constraint on what is going on–it's certainly visible right now as a fashion, but I'm claiming there's more to it than that, a history, a theoretical hinterland.
> > it's a kind of moral imperative,
> That's not as much of a difference as you seem to think: morality is in a very real sense just behavioral aesthetics; the broad outlines of morality may be fairly slow preferences to change, but you can find fairly slow to change elements in most domains of aesthetic. The attractiveness of the raw industrial look in interior design, however, is not among them, no matter how one might dress it up in language of morality.
I'm not going to claim that I can reduce the philosophy of morality to one sentence, as you have. It's definitely the case that ethics and aesthetics both concern judgements of value. (Historically they would both have been considered under the heading of axiology.)
Subsuming morality under aesthetics makes it something personal and sort of implies the transcendence of the judging subject, because only subjects have aesthetic experience. It is IMO very iffy, close to an https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aestheticization_of_politics.
For architects, truth to materials is a "moral" imperative because it's thought of in terms of honesty, or a judgement of what is good rather than what is tasteful. I'm not making any broader claim that morality is unchanging. But this is a very long-running architectural design value, which just happens to be manifesting itself in certain conspicuous trendy ways at the moment. It's not a matter of "dressing up [the conversation] in the language of morality"; if you believe architecture is more than just eye candy, you can't avoid considering morality.
So we can agree that exposed services is often just a decision made on superficial aesthetic grounds. But IMO the reason why they are considered appealing has a lot to do with very deep-seated ideas about ethics and right conduct, and as you say yourself, those ideas change slowly.
Architecture is the art of creating buildings that are functional and pleasant. If some architect places a higher value on "truthiness" than on people's reaction he is just plain incompetent.
I'm sincere, if that's what you are asking. I have a postgrad in architectural history and theory, spent 5 years in architecture school, so I guess the answer to your question is probably "yes".
The idea that functional items can be designed in a way that avoids ephemeral styling or fashions (think of the annual model changes in the US car industry of the 50s) is a key modernist principle. Whether it's actually possible to draw that distinction and maintain it in practice is a totally different question.
Left field? I can read plenty of Protestant, conservative reactionarianism in the parent’s description of Architecture. How is that left-field, I don’t s understand. Can you elaborate?
If you look at what happened here, I posted a very short comment asserting that honesty/"truth to materials" was a long-standing architectural value. Somebody followed up, attempting to refute every sentence in my comment. I felt like calling them out on their completely unwarranted, hostile contradiction of my comment.
So I wrote a long reply which supports my initial argument that "architects think like this". Not saying whether I agree with them.
That reply has received multiple abrupt aggressive responses: "architects are liars", "if an architect focuses on theory and fails to please the audience, he is incompetent", and now that my description is "conservative" and worse.
It's like the legend of the hydra, honestly.
My comment was intended as a historical overview. If you know of a significant school of thought in architecture that is profoundly radical, progressive, hedonistic in ways that are in conflict with the moralistic principles that I was attributing to architectural aesthetics, I'd love to hear about it.
Oh I didn't intend it as that, sorry. I just didn't understand the baseball reference of the parent post and thought it attributing the description in your post to a leftist political view. Far from being an attack, it paints the picture of a fairly calvinist, very moralistic enterprise (IMHO) not exactly a social revolution... but perhaps that's what Architecture is, at least in the western english-speaking societies? Don't really know... peace
Providing liveable acoustics isn't a lot less important than providing enough light. But few would argue that such honesty compels the architect to install 70s strip lighting.
i really believe it is just a fashion.
it is meant to trick (trick is not usually associated with moral etc) the visitor/customer/employee into thinking that the restaurant/store/company is being honest, organic and raw.
give it 5 years and people will tire of it and go back to drop ceilings with proper lighting and proper ac. (and while i'm ranting, what it with those terrible weak led filament bulbs. god damn whatever it is they do, it isn't adding light).
The LED filament bulbs are probably just dim because they've been dimmed. The filaments themselves are just strings of multiple LEDs in an optical coating and are actually a pretty efficient design.
Those same dim lights are likely quite bright after closing during cleanup when the staff wants to be able to see better.
The comment I was replying to made a clear distinction between acoustic and aesthetic aspects.
Music is aesthetic sound, so you have a point, but most architects consider acoustics as something functional like temperature or ventilation. It's really rare for a space to be conceptualized in terms of a particular desired acoustic, except for theatres and concert halls.
Mitigating the kind of noise restaurants can create isn't expensive. There's an off the shelf engineered solution that's been around for almost 70 years. Acoustic ceiling tiles. Restaurants are loud because acoustic ceiling tiles are out of fashion even though significantly less expensive than hard surfaces and exposed building services+structure if painted.[1] Though carpeting and upholstery help, acoustic treatment of the ceiling is the first line of noise mitigation. [2]
[1]: Among the most costly finishes are services and structures fabricated to aesthetic criteria.
[2]: The stylistic trend away from acoustic ceiling tile, carpets, and upholstery further erodes acoustic privacy in open offices.