Imagine being able to hear what your project will sound like, and understand how design choices will shape future experiences. An environment where you can explore and understand every aspect of sound and noise, and then use it to shape desired outcomes. This is the Arup SoundLab.
SoundLab is a collaborative environment where project constituents and stakeholders come together answers to fundamental questions like ‘how will the orchestra sound in different seats in this venue?’, ‘how much noise from this new railway will we hear at our residence?’, ‘will these patient rooms be quiet enough to allow an optimum recovery experience?’, or ‘how much traffic noise will I hear in this new building’. By providing objective, quantifiable information in an accessible format, through listening, SoundLab makes the intangible tangible, demystifying and bringing greater client confidence that the design outcomes (and user experiences) will be as expected.
SoundLab makes deeper use of data, artificial intelligence and machine learning, to extend the ways it can be used, drawing valuable insights from many thousands of completed projects.
We have used SoundLab to inform the design of some of the world’s best arts and culture venues, and to allow people to experience the impact of major infrastructure projects during the design process, shaping better design outcomes. SoundLab is also used alongside a range of immersive reality tools, including immersive projections, augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality visualisation to enable multi-sensory design development in projects. SoundLab® is a core tool in all the acoustics design work we undertake.