Five Questions on the Indoor Soundscape Approach for Regenerative Buildings

Regenerative building design represents a paradigm shift from current sustainability practices towards a new design approach, as it focuses not only on limiting negative impacts but also on promoting a positive contribution to social and ecological systems. Regenerative design and indoor soundscape research share a multidisciplinary approach and the common aim of improving people´s health and well-being. Indeed, soundscape science, originally developed in the context of urban planning, has been recently applied to the indoor built environment as a research framework that integrates noise control engineering methods with physical, social, and psychological approaches in order to foster the design of indoor spaces positively perceived by building users. The five questions presented in this paper investigate several aspects related to this emerging field of research: 1) the contribution of acoustic design to regenerative buildings; 2) differences and similarities between indoor and outdoor soundscape approaches; 3) methodologies for “measuring” indoor soundscapes; 4) the potential of sound management for biophilic design, and 5) the relationship between “wanted” sounds and health outcomes. This study relied on structured interviews with a panel of experts conducted as part of the COST Action RESTORE. Together with interviewees, an agenda for future advances in indoor soundscaping is proposed.