Design-to-Manufacture Workflows of Sound-Scattering Acoustic Brick Walls

Improving speech intelligibility in classrooms enhances information dissemination, institutional knowledge capture, and quality of learning experience. While off-the-shelf solutions are available for acoustically retrofitting existing learning spaces, they do not allow for a fine-tuned context-specific intervention. However, this possibility is enabled through bespoke digital manufacturing informed by advanced digital simulations. In this research we explore and synchronize architecture, acoustics, computation, and fabrication for the making of better sound environments. We present performance-driven design-to-manufacture (DTM) workflows for sound-scattering brick elements. We reimagine the brick as an acoustically active geometry capable of modulating the sound experience in a university classroom by improving speech intelligibility. We contextualize our research within existing methods of digital performance-based design and robotic fabrication processes, namely wire cutting and pick-and-place applications. We then detail digital methods that combine heuristics and acoustic simulation to design the bricks within the 3D modeling environment, as well as describe the processes of robotic oscillating wire cutting and adaptive pick-and-place developed for the execution of the full-scale demonstrator. Finally, we report on the results of the acoustic analysis performed on the full-scale demonstrator in situ and laboratory measurements of a representative demonstrator which validates our design hypothesis.