LAUSR

In Japan, most nursery facilities have been built without considering the acoustic requirements; thus, the rooms tend to be reverberant and very noisy from the daily activities of children. The poor sound environment could be harmful not only as a living environment for the children but also as a working environment for the nursery staff. This presentation reports on a case study of a nursery that worked on the reduction of its high sound level. First, the architectural features of the nursery room and the status of the sound environment, which was reported by the nurses’ claims and measured to be approximately 80 dB or higher during lunch time, was investigated. Second, to improve the noisy environment, two tasks were carried out. One was the installation of absorbing materials onto the walls and ceilings, which shortened the reverberation time by half. The other was the introduction of management efforts aiming for children to lower the loudness of their voices. These were performed with a demonstration...