From sport to science: the acoustics of a pool transformed into an auditorium

A dismissed public building has been donated to the University of Foggia, Italy, due to the demand of facilities that the different departments requested for their academic meetings and events. This building, realized almost a hundred of years ago, was pro vided with a swimming pool on the ground floor, to be 25 m long and 3 m deep. The architects in charge to apply the change of use have designed the realization of an auditorium in place of the pool. The project consists of the installation of the audience seats on a 10% sloped stalls area, having a rectangular plan layout. The short dimension headwall, that is 3 m high, has been designed to allocate a screen for image and video projection. Before any change, a campaign of acoustic measurements has been unde rtaken in order to assess the existing conditions of the room, having a volume size of 4000 m3. The results from the first survey highlight that the main acoustic parameters were abundantly out of the optimal range defined for an auditorium. ThisThis paperpaper dedealsals withwith thethe acousticacoustic designdesign ofof anan auditoriumauditorium determineddetermined byby somesome mitigationtion solutionssolutions appliedapplied toto lowerlower thethe reverberationreverberation andand increaseincrease thethe speechspeech intelligibilityintelligibility inin termsterms ofof SpeechSpeech TransmissionTransmission IndexIndex (STI).(STI). TheThe additionaddition ofof absorbingabsorbing surfacesurface areasareas inin anan almoalmostst totallytotally rever-rever-berantberant roomroom allowedallowed thethe usersusers toto effectivelyeffectively makemake useuse ofof thisthis facility.facility. AA secondsecond campaigncampaign ofof measure-measure-mentsments carriedcarried outout afterafter thethe realizationrealization ofof thethe acousticacoustic designdesign havehave beenbeen analyzedanalyzed andand comparedcompared withwith thethe predictionspredictions..