6 June 2021
In June 2021, the list of winners of the Royster Student Scholarship Award 2020+ sponsored by Acoustical Society of America’s East and South East Asia Regional Chapter were released. According to the list, works named “the Shape of Water-Acoustic Design of Waterscape and their Application in Psychological Rehabilitation” of postgraduate students of the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, including Lei Yue, Li Siqian, Feng Yaohan and Zhuang Kaiyue, claimed the First Prize. Professor Xie Hui and Doctor Liu Chang acted as their supervisors. This is the third time that the soundscape design course of the Faculty has won prizes in international competitions.
The prize winning design is the soundscape design of outdoor public spaces of Chongqing University Cancer Hospital, which takes the circulation of water in the nature as the expression theme, and features the outdoor soundscape dominated by the sound of water. Various waterscape elements like the fountain, brook and bubbling spring are used to connect different sites to form a complete healing space. Specifically, the change of sound of water is changed through acoustic design, so as to change its stimulation to human emotion and perception, form a psychological rehabilitation path, and help tumor patients improve their perception of the environment. Based on the psychological characteristics of patients and medical workers, this design includes the behavioral characteristics and treatment needs of tumor patients extracted through questionnaire survey and network data analysis.
In the design, the change in form of waterscape in a scenario is used to reflect the unnoticed elapse of time in the space. Eight landscape nodes are scattered along the main walking path of tumor patients. Outdoor landscape that embodies “cloud, fog, rain and brook” is designed on the basis of the process of natural circulation of water, supplemented by sound of water of different characteristics depending on the theme of each node. Furthermore, according to the behavior pattern of patients, a healing path connected by a number of nodes is designed in the outdoor space. The patients will be attracted by outdoor landscape when they are walking outside. Apart from that, interactive landscape is designed on the main paths of the patients to interact with the patients and allow them to be immersed in the landscape.
At 10:00 on June 1, 2021 (America Eastern Standard Time), the group members attended the working meeting of 2020 Acoustical Society of America’s East and South East Asia Regional Chapter. At the meeting, attendants had discussion about the latest progress in acoustic research of members from different countries. The group members reported their design works and had on-line discussion with world well-known experts in acoustics at the meeting.
The theme of the Royster Student Scholarship Award 2020+ is “sound and health”. Trapped in a noisy and tense urban environment, residents are unable to relax, and the mechanical and transportation noise will cause mental fatigue. Participants were required to restore people's mental state, reduce pressure, improve concentration, and rebuild the connection between urban residents and the building environment through the design of healing sound scene, in an ultimate effort to establish a restorative sound environment. The design was required to include the analysis of the sound environment of the project base, noise control measures, the protection of hearing of local residents, and the design and evaluation of sound landscape, and the analysis of the relationship between sound and mental health. The review experts included world well-known architectural designers and acoustic consultants. The award was given to two participating teams, and the other winning team was the team of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
Royster Student Scholarship Award 2020+ has been held for 18 years since its establishment in 2003. It is sponsored by Acoustical Society of America, and is open only to full-time postgraduate students. The event is held once a year to encourage students to apply acoustic design and acoustics related theories in architectural design in a comprehensive way. The winning of the First Prize by the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning has further increased the international influence of Chongqing University in the field of architectural acoustics and soundscape design
