Teaching Room Acoustic Treatment at European University

A Sustainable Classroom

The Teaching Room of the Florence School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute, Italy, was acoustically treated using eco-friendly sustainable solutions Flat Panel VMT with VicSpacer Plus. The project was implemented by Mediaintegra, based on recommendations by the Vicoustic Project Team.

Sound reflective teaching rooms

One of the major acoustic issues to take into account in spaces such as teaching rooms is the excessive reverberation inside the rooms. Typically, teaching rooms have sound reflective surfaces, such as glass and concrete. This type of construction combined with the lack of acoustic treatment results in very reverberant spaces, which will compromise speech intelligibility.

Some of the activities to be carried inside a teaching room may involve several students talking at the same time, which will result in a quick build-up of the background noise. Furthermore, teachers tend to raise their voices to overcome the high background noise levels and make themselves understandable to the students.

Improving speech intelligibility

In addition, it has been proven throughout the years that teaching rooms with high reverberation time values, consequently, have poor speech intelligibility, which may result in a loss of concentration from the students, ultimately, having a negative effect on the students’ performance.

It is, therefore, essential to develop solutions to control the room’s reverberation time (RT) and in this way minimize the teaching room’s background noise and optimize its speech intelligibility. This will help provide clear communication between the teacher and the students, and between students as well.

Eco-friendly acoustic recommendation

Vicoustic proposed the sound-absorbing Flat Panel VMT, made from VicPET Wool, mainly produced from recycled plastic. The Flat Panel VMT was installed with VicSpacer Plus panels for sound absorption enhancement. The panels were applied to the walls and ceiling of the teaching room.

This will control the reflections by taking energy from them. It should be noted that other acoustic anomalies such as flutter echoes are also being minimised by the solutions proposed for RT and reflection control.