It's time to start designing for our ears. Architects and designers tend to focus exclusively on these. They use these to design with and they design for them, which is why we end up sitting in restaurants that look like this — (loud crowd noise) — and sound like this, shouting from a foot away to try and be heard by our dinner companion, or why we get on airplanes -- (flight attendant announcements) -- which cost 200 million pounds, with somebody talking through an old-fashioned telephone handset on a cheap stereo system, making us jump out of our skins.
是時候開始為我們的耳朵而設計了(聽覺)。 建築師與設計師們似乎有個趨勢 都專注設計給這個 - (眼睛,視覺)。 他們以視覺為考量去設計出一些只著重視覺觀感的設計, 這也是為什麼餐廳看起來像這樣 但聽起來卻是這樣(吵雜聲), 必須大聲說話,試圖讓距離一尺外 共進晚餐的朋友聽見, 又或者為什麼在造價 2 億的飛機上 (空服員廣播聲) 卻聽到這樣經由老式話筒接收 再由廉價的立體聲系統傳出的廣播, 十分令人感到不舒服。
We're designing environments that make us crazy. (Laughter) And it's not just our quality of life which suffers. It's our health, our social behavior, and our productivity as well.
我們正設計些會讓我們發瘋的環境。 (笑聲) 這不只是降低我們的生活品質。 我們的健康, 我們的社會行為以及我們的生產力都會受到影響。
How does this work? Well, two ways. First of all, ambience. I have a whole TEDTalk about this. Sound affects us physiologically, psychologically, cognitively and behaviorally all the time. The sound around us is affecting us even though we're not conscious of it. There's a second way though, as well. That's interference. Communication requires sending and receiving, and I have another whole TEDTalk about the importance of conscious listening, but I can send as well as I like, and you can be brilliant conscious listeners. If the space I'm sending it in is not effective, that communication can't happen.
這是為什麼呢? 原因可分為兩方面。 首先,週遭環境。 這部份在我另一個 TED 演講中有較完整的說明。 聲音無時無刻都影響著我們的生理、心理、 我們的認知以及我們的行為。 即使我們沒有意識到, 我們周圍的聲音還是影響著我們。 再來就是第二方面 - 干擾。 溝通必須有傳送以及接收, 這我也在另一個 TED 演講中講到 有意識的聆聽的重要性, 但即使我可以好好把訊息傳遞出去 而你也做為一個很好的有意識的聆聽者, 只要我們所處的空間環境不理想 就無法有效地溝通。
Spaces tend to include noise and acoustics. A room like this has acoustics, this one very good acoustics. Many rooms are not so good. Let me give you some examples from a couple of areas which I think we all care about: health and education. (Hospital noises) When I was visiting my terminally ill father in a hospital, I was asking myself, how does anybody get well in a place that sounds like this? Hospital sound is getting worse all the time. Noise levels in hospitals have doubled in the last few years, and it affects not just the patients but also the people working there. I think we would like for dispensing errors to be zero, wouldn't we? And yet, as noise levels go up, so do the errors in dispensing made by the staff in hospitals. Most of all, though, it affects the patients, and that could be you, it could be me. Sleep is absolutely crucial for recovery. It's when we regenerate, when we rebuild ourselves, and with threatening noise like this going on, your body, even if you are able to sleep, your body is telling you, "I'm under threat. This is dangerous." And the quality of sleep is degraded, and so is our recovery. There are just huge benefits to come from designing for the ears in our health care. This is an area I intend to take on this year.
空間包括噪音以及音響效果。 像這個場地有很好的音響效果。 很多其他場地的音響效果就沒這麼好了。 讓我舉幾個例子來說 -- 我想這是大家都關心的領域:健康和教育。 (醫院的噪音) 當我到醫院探望我病危的父親時 我問了自己一個問題 -- 人們怎麼能在這樣的環境中康復呢? 醫院的噪音愈來愈嚴重。 在過去幾年醫院的噪音程度翻了一倍, 這不只是影響病人, 也影響到在醫院工作的人。 我們都希望配藥出錯率為零 不是嗎? 然而隨著噪音程度的上升, 醫院員工的配藥出錯率也會上升。 首當其衝的還是病人, 而這可能會是你也可能會是我。 睡眠是康復過程中最重要的一環。 是我們再生、自我復原的時候, 然而在這種吵雜的環境下 就算你可以睡得著,你的身體也會告訴你 「我正受到威脅、這裡是危險的。」 於是睡眠的品質下降了,康復的速度也下降了。 以聽覺的角度進行設計 只會為我們的醫療保健帶來極大的益處。 這是我今年打算涉及的領域:
Education. When I see a classroom that looks like this, can you imagine how this sounds? I am forced to ask myself a question. ("Do architects have ears?") (Laughter) Now, that's a little unfair. Some of my best friends are architects. (Laughter) And they definitely do have ears. But I think sometimes they don't use them when they're designing buildings. Here's a case in point. This is a 32-million-pound flagship academy school which was built quite recently in the U.K. and designed by one of Britain's top architects. Unfortunately, it was designed like a corporate headquarters, with a vast central atrium and classrooms leading off it with no back walls at all. The children couldn't hear their teachers. They had to go back in and spend 600,000 pounds putting the walls in. Let's stop this madness of open plan classrooms right now, please.
教育。 當我看到像這樣的教室, 你能想像上課聽起來怎樣嗎? 我不禁問自己一個問題: (「建築師們有耳朵嗎?」) (笑聲) 這樣說有點不公平,畢竟我有一些摯友就是建築師, (笑聲) 而他們也都有耳朵。 但我覺得有時候他們在設計時並沒有考量到耳朵的部份。 這就是個實際的例子。 這是一所耗資 3200 萬英鎊的旗艦學校, 最近剛在英國落成 而且是由一位英國頂尖的建築師設計的。 不幸的是,它被設計的像個企業總部, 有個大型的中庭, 然後教室緊接著中庭而且沒有背牆。 孩子們根本聽不到老師在講什麼。 後來只好又花了 60 萬英鎊加建背牆。 請停止這種開放式教室瘋狂的設計吧! 拜託,請立刻停止吧!
It's not just these modern buildings which suffer. Old-fashioned classrooms suffer too. A study in Florida just a few years ago found that if you're sitting where this photograph was taken in the classroom, row four, speech intelligibility is just 50 percent. Children are losing one word in two. Now that doesn't mean they only get half their education, but it does mean they have to work very hard to join the dots and understand what's going on.
不只這種新式設計有問題, 舊式的教室也有這種問題。 在一個佛羅里達州沒幾年前的研究發現 如果你坐在拍攝這張照片的地方 -- 第四排, 語言的辨別理解度 僅剩下 50%。 孩子們只能聽到一半的內容。 當然這不代表他們只接受到一半的教育, 但卻表示他們必須花更多心力 把前後連貫才有辦法理解內容。
This is affected massively by reverberation time, how reverberant a room is. In a classroom with a reverberation time of 1.2 seconds, which is pretty common, this is what it sounds like.
這絕大部分是受到回響的時間影響, 看這個空間的回響程度而定。 在一個回響時間 1.2 秒的教室中 -- 這是很常見的情況, 聲音聽起來是像這樣的。
(Inaudible echoing voice)
(無法辨別、有回響的語音)
Not so good, is it? If you take that 1.2 seconds down to 0.4 seconds by installing acoustic treatments, sound absorbing materials and so forth, this is what you get.
不是很好,對吧? 如果藉由裝設一些改善音響效果的裝置、 吸音材料等,將回響時間由 1.2 秒降到 0.4 秒, 可以得到這樣的結果。
Voice: In language, infinitely many words can be written with a small set of letters. In arithmetic, infinitely many numbers can be composed from just a few digits with the help of the simple zero.
語音:在語言中,由一小組的字母 就可以寫出無限多的詞彙。 在數學中,由幾個數字再加上 "0" 就可以組合成無限多個數值。
Julian Treasure: What a difference. Now that education you would receive, and thanks to the British acoustician Adrian James for those simulations. The signal was the same, the background noise was the same. All that changed was the acoustics of the classroom in those two examples.
Julian Treasure: 如此大的差異。 這樣的教育你就可以接收到了。 剛才的情況模擬是由英國聲學專家 Adrian James 所提供。 在剛才的兩個情況中, 聲音訊號以及背景噪音都沒有變動。 唯一改變的就只有 教室的音響效果。
If education can be likened to watering a garden, which is a fair metaphor, sadly, much of the water is evaporating before it reaches the flowers, especially for some groups, for example, those with hearing impairment. Now that's not just deaf children. That could be any child who's got a cold, glue ear, an ear infection, even hay fever. On a given day, one in eight children fall into that group, on any given day. Then you have children for whom English is a second language, or whatever they're being taught in is a second language. In the U.K., that's more than 10 percent of the school population. And finally, after Susan Cain's wonderful TEDTalk in February, we know that introverts find it very difficult to relate when they're in a noisy environment doing group work. Add those up. That is a lot of children who are not receiving their education properly.
如果把教育比喻作在花園澆水 -- 這是蠻合理的比喻, 很遺憾的,大部分的水分 在澆到花之前就蒸發掉了, 這情形對某些類別的人更是如此, 例如: 聽力受損的人。 這不只是指失聰的孩子,還包括感冒、 漿液性中耳炎、耳道感染甚至花粉症的孩子。 任一天,每八個孩子就有一個 是以上這個類別的人。 再加上英語為第二語言的孩子 或是以任何第二語言學習的孩子。 在英國就有超過 10% 的孩子是如此。 最後,在聽過 Susan Cain 在二月份精彩的 TED 演講之後, 我們知道生性內向的人很難在吵雜的環境中 在團體作業中取得共鳴。 以上這些加總起來。實在很多孩子 都沒有確實地接受到完整的教育。
It's not just the children who are affected, though. (Noisy conversation) This study in Germany found the average noise level in classrooms is 65 decibels. I have to really raise my voice to talk over 65 decibels of sound, and teachers are not just raising their voices. This chart maps the teacher's heart rate against the noise level. Noise goes up, heart rate goes up. That is not good for you. In fact, 65 decibels is the very level at which this big survey of all the evidence on noise and health found that, that is the threshold for the danger of myocardial infarction. To you and me, that's a heart attack. It may not be pushing the boat out too far to suggest that many teachers are losing significant life expectancy by teaching in environments like that day after day.
然而,不只是孩子們受到影響。 (吵雜的對話聲) 這個在德國的研究發現 教室中平均的噪音程度是 65 分貝。 我必須提高我的音量才有辦法在 65 分貝的環境中被聽到, 而老師們也不只是提高他們的音量。 這個圖表對照出老師的心跳速率 跟噪音程度的關係。 噪音程度提升時心跳速率也會上升。 這對身體是不好的。 事實上,在這個噪音與健康的研究中也指出, 65 分貝也正好是噪音誘發心肌梗塞 的閾值 (臨界值)。 對你我來說,就是指心臟病。 我們甚至可以說,老師們 每天在這樣的環境中教學 就是在縮短他們的壽命。
What does it cost to treat a classroom down to that 0.4-second reverberation time? Two and a half thousand pounds. And the Essex study which has just been done in the U.K., which incidentally showed that when you do this, you do not just make a room that's suitable for hearing-impaired children, you make a room where behavior improves, and results improve significantly, this found that sending a child out of area to a school that does have such a room, if you don't have one, costs 90,000 pounds a year. I think the economics are pretty clear on this.
把教室的回響時間降到 0.4 秒 到底要花多少錢呢? 2,500 英鎊。 剛在英國艾塞克斯 (Essex) 完成的一個研究指出, 這樣的改造不只是 創造一個更適合那些聽力受損孩子的環境, 更可以顯著提升孩子們的 行為表現以及學習成效。 研究也指出,如果學校沒有這樣的教室環境 而把孩子送到別區中有這樣教室環境的學校, 每年需花費 90,000 英鎊。 我想,這從經濟的角度來看也很清楚了吧。
I'm glad that debate is happening on this. I just moderated a major conference in London a few weeks ago called Sound Education, which brought together top acousticians, government people, teachers, and so forth. We're at last starting to debate this issue, and the benefits that are available for designing for the ears in education, unbelievable. Out of that conference, incidentally, also came a free app which is designed to help children study if they're having to work at home, for example, in a noisy kitchen. And that's free out of that conference.
我很高興人們開始思考、討論這個議題。 幾個禮拜前我在倫敦 (London) 主持了一個 大型會議,主題是「聲音教育」, 吸引了許多頂尖聲學專家、 政府人員及老師等來參與。 我們終於開始探討這個議題, 而在教育的部份,為耳朵 (聽覺) 的設計所帶來益處 是非常驚人的。 這場會議也偶然地帶來了一款免費的程式, 專門設計來幫助孩子 在家裡吵雜的環境中 (如廚房) 學習。 這套軟體是免費的。
Let's broaden the perspective a little bit and look at cities. We have urban planners. Where are the urban sound planners? I don't know of one in the world, and the opportunity is there to transform our experience in our cities. The World Health Organization estimates that a quarter of Europe's population is having its sleep degraded by noise in cities. We can do better than that.
讓我們放寬我們的焦點 看到了城市。 我們有都市計劃的人員。 那都市聲音規劃的人員呢? 我從未遇到過一個,而我們也確實有這個機會 可以改善居住在都市中的經驗品質。 世界衛生組織 (WHO) 估計 有 1/4 歐洲人口因為都市的噪音導致睡眠品質的下降。 這都是我們可以改善的。
And in our offices, we spend a lot of time at work. Where are the office sound planners? People who say, don't sit that team next to this team, because they like noise and they need quiet. Or who say, don't spend all your budget on a huge screen in the conference room, and then place one tiny microphone in the middle of a table for 30 people. (Laughter) If you can hear me, you can understand me without seeing me. If you can see me without hearing me, that does not work. So office sound is a huge area, and incidentally, noise in offices has been shown to make people less helpful, less enjoy their teamwork, and less productive at work.
又例如我們的辦公室,我們花很多時間在那工作。 那辦公室聲音規劃的人員呢? 有人會說,不要把這兩組人排在一起 因為一組喜歡喧鬧另一組喜歡安靜。 也有人會說,不要把預算全部 花在會議室的大螢幕然後 只在 30 人的會議桌中央 裝設一支小小的麥克風。 (笑聲) 如果你可以聽清楚我說的話,不需要看到我就可以 了解我想表達的事情。但如果你只看的到我卻聽不到, 這是沒有用的。 所以我們知道辦公室的聲音效果很重要, 湊巧的是,辦公室的噪音也讓人變得冷漠、 變得較無法享受團隊工作的樂趣 以及使生產力下降。
Finally, we have homes. We use interior designers. Where are the interior sound designers? Hey, let's all be interior sound designers, take on listening to our rooms and designing sound that's effective and appropriate.
最後,看到我們的居家環境。我們有室內設計師。 但室內聲音規劃的人員呢? 讓我們都來做室內聲音的規劃吧, 讓我們開始聆聽我們的房間並設計一個讓聲音可以 適當、有效地傳遞的空間吧。
My friend Richard Mazuch, an architect in London, coined the phrase "invisible architecture." I love that phrase. It's about designing, not appearance, but experience, so that we have spaces that sound as good as they look, that are fit for purpose, that improve our quality of life, our health and well being, our social behavior and our productivity.
我的朋友 Richard Mazuch,一名倫敦的建築師, 創造了一個詞「隱形的建築設計」。 我太愛這個詞了。 它是指關注實際體驗、感受的設計而非只注重外表, 這樣才能讓空間的視覺效果跟聽覺效果兼具, 讓空間可以符合規劃的用途、提升我們的生活品質及健康、 提升我們的社會行為 以及我們的生產力。
It's time to start designing for the ears. Thank you. (Applause) (Applause) Thank you. (Applause)
是時候開始為我們的耳朵而設計了(聽覺)。 謝謝。(掌聲) (掌聲) 謝謝。(掌聲)