Abstract
Urban environment produces unpleasant noise that disturbs people such as traffic, industry, speech communication, human activity, living appliances, and natural phenomena noise. Measured data in a residential unit along Upper Changi Road East shows significant increase of noise level when the windows are opened as compared to closed windows. While people close up their windows to reduce the noise, natural ventilation gets cut off replaced by mechanical ventilation, which is harmful for human health in a complete dependence as natural ventilation is essential to replace indoor air with fresh outdoor air . Therefore, this research has an objective to create an architectural solution that can satisfy a comfortable level of both acoustic and natural ventilation. Looking at precedent research related to the topic, there are various ways in reducing noise level and increasing natural ventilation separately. In a mission to tackle both aspect, this research chose to focus on building scale rather than urban scale, with possible solutions in the form of architectural element of boundary between indoor space and outside environment, and arrangement of indoor space. Related existing strategies and theories on noise and ventilation are also documented as the basis for the design process in the future. Iterative design guided by 4 hypothesis about building geometrical features, building opening design, materiality, and space arrangement will be assessed for both noise and ventilation performance. A housing block in Bedok is chosen as a site to demonstrate the design performance provided a series of noise challenges and prevailing wind direction on the location. Pachyderm Acoustic is used to assess noise level, calibrated with the measured data from Upper Changi Road East unit, and also observed on the model sensitivity towards the simulation result. Ventilation measure will be observed from Computational Fluid Dynamics simulation on Autodesk CFD. A library of noise performance on existing facade in Singapore was done and analysis on the results draws a few conclusions on building geometrical features impact on noise performance. With this preparation document, the design process will start next term, consisting of 3D modeling of possible solution, digital simulation, and physical model building and simulation in achieving a final design by the end of Term 10.