Poplar Acoustics

This project is focused on Poplar wood in decay, where visual, structural, and sound characteristics are analysed and indentified through material studies, prototype studies, computational studies and measurement studies. 

The research findings have both philosophical and practical consequences for how tectonics can be understood and developed in future studies and practices, by a focus on transformational and temporal acting forces, leading to a continuous revealing, and therefore a persistent and dynamic tectonic articulation. This position is argued to open novel pathways for tectonics as an approach that engage with material and environmental agency and uncertainty, which in turn empowers architecture to address urgent questions of material scarcity and material-climatic relations. 

The material is studied explicitly for its material transformation processes driven by a forest environment, where the fungal attack has led to the alteration of material colour, texture and density properties.

Material samples are produced for density measurements and acoustic absorption testing using the impedance tube method.

Based on the new insight of material density, material colour/texture and material sound absorption, a computational analysis and design model is developed by correlation of the three datasets. The model uses visual analysis of bespoke material samples, for then to calculate the predicted sound absorption of the sample, enabling the composition of complex inhomogenous materials into articulated acoustic structures.

Following the understanding of the material properties, development of the new analysis and design method, form and assembly experiments are conducted to compose acoustic properties that influence room acoustic conditions.