EDUCATION THROUGH RESEARCH. ACOUSTIC EXPERIMENT PERFORMED BY BACHELOR STUDENTS OF ARCHITECTURE

Correlations between the acoustic features of an environment and behaviour of people present in it have been studied by many researchers. Acoustic comfort is typically expressed by judgement of qualitative and quantitative aspects. Subjective assessment is typically used in qualitative studies and often serves as a valuable input in preparation of quantitative models. Large gathering public spaces, such as atria or shopping malls belong to rooms, where assessment of acoustic comfort is not trivial. Traditional objective acoustic parameters were developed for different scale and therefore research related to these types of spaces is still needed. In this paper, a questionnaire was used that focuses on description of the acoustic environment in 3 shopping malls in Bratislava. Volunteers/participants were students from Faculty of Architecture STU Bratislava. The aim of this work was twofold. First one is educational, and thus the intention was to increase the awareness of students of architecture about room acoustics and noise issues. Second, based on their answers, to follow some features which are influencing perception of acoustic comfort of young people in large gathering spaces.