Sound Propositions
THE first breath of warm air caught the country's road-menders by surprise. As a rule the pneumatic drills start vibrating the moment we prise open our winter-warped windows. No doubt the reprieve will be very short. But perhaps we should stop thinking of noisy and smelly digging operations as a necessary evil. This week the Royal Institute of British Architects has said that the building industry ought to get together with the manu- facturers of machinery and form a development group to discuss quieter methods of construc- tion. It points out--in a memorandum on the Problems of noise, which it has submitted to the ,committee appointed by the Minister of Science--that a quiet method of digging (an Italian system, also to be used for the multi- basemented BP building in London) is being employed on the Hyde Park underpass outside St. George's Hospital.
The architects insist, in their evidence, that a lot of the noises which cause nuisance or dis- comfort must be silenced at source. They say, for example, that industrial machinery should be made quieter and that the recommended heliport for central London should be aban- doned. But they confess that they are partly responsible for the increase of noise nuisances inside buildings. They say, in particular, that a lot of noise penetrates the light-weight factory- made panels that are used nowadays both for external and internal walls, and they ask for research to be done to overcome this fault.
Anyone who has tried to fight back against noise from adjoining rooms or from the street outside will agree with the architects' report, which says: 'It is too readily accepted that the cost of minimising noise should be borne by those affected by it.' Four proposals 'made in the report are that: (1) future road planning should keep through-traffic away from residential areas; (2) harmful industrial noises should be made illegal; (3) the law 'Should also insist on a high standard of sound insulation between dwellings; and (4) town-planning legislation should make it impossible for noise-making projects to be set up near schools, houses. hospitals or churches.
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