ABSTRACT
They're dealing, for example, with such matters as hearlng, ventilation, plumbing, artificiallighting, day-lighting, noise reduction, and so on. In their work they are carrying out accurate experiments on bricks, on walls and rooms, and
Let me take an example to show you how a scientist tackles one of these problems. We've all suffered from the sort ofhouse in which it's quite impossible to settle down to read in peace and quietness when there's a wireless on in the next room-or in which anyone having a bath late at night wakens up aIl the rest of the family. The problem is, of course, that of the transmission of sound and the scientist had to turn detective in tracking the various ways in which the sound vibrations travelled from one room to the nat. Careful experiments showed that the sound does not all come straight through the dividing wall. It also travels along the ftoor and along the side walls. So if we want to stop this passage of sound we must go as rar as we can to separate one room from the next. We must aim at designing our house so that it's not a box divided into rooms by partitions, but really a collection of separate boxes held together by a strong framework. There's no reason why the same principles shouldn't be applied to a lesser extent in any house or block of f1ats. That's the sort of way in which the discoveries of the scientist can help the architect.
