Acoustics in schools: Explaining the options to architects by the use of approximate formulae and graphs, with a special emphasis on dining spaces

The UK is undertaking a large-scale rebuilding of its school stock. The scale of the operation has meant that designers with little knowledge of school design are frequently involved. One negative consequence of this can be poor acoustic design and therefore a poor indoor environment. This paper is in part pedagogical, and presents a series of new key relationships in the acoustics of school spaces with an emphasis on dining rooms — an area with which architects have been found to have difficulties. Hopefully, this work will allow architects and building services engineers to appreciate better various salient points and to understand fully the flexibility they have to design novel spaces that can provide a high quality educational experience. Several novel equations are derived that acousticians, building services engineers, and architects may feel useful during the early stages of the design process. Three case studies are also given.