The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933.(Brief Article)

Interior Design, February, 2003 by Abercrombie, Stanley

Emily Thompson Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, $45 500 pages, 117 black-and-white illustrations

Interior designers naturally concentrate on the visual aspect of their work. They also attend to the tactility of materials and the mechanical functions that keep spaces heated, cooled, ventilated, powered, and secure. How spaces sound is often the last thing to be considered--except in the case of concert and lecture halls. This entertaining book by an editor of The Architecture of Science provides a history of acoustics, detailing the discovery and codification of the qualities of sound. Emily Thompson also provokes thought about how interiors should sound now. Johns Hopkins University professor Stuart W. Leslie is quoted on the dust jacket: "A good book opens...

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