Design of acoustic wellbeing

Acoustic comfort is an essential feature in the perception of environmental wellbeing. Starting from this consideration, even in the absence of a specific market, free research activity has been developed by an interdisciplinary work team which, after examining the features of the existing sound-absorption systems, focused its attention on the calibration of the combination of expression/technical function, on the languages that can be adopted and, therefore, on the materials that can be used, focusing on existing unfinished products, including those originating from process waste. The design activity has generated some concepts of products in particular that can be used within the scope of public restaurants, where the presence of an “acoustically active” environment, while being implicitly characteristic of the social nature of the place itself on one hand, can become a limit to its use on the other. The aim of this paper is to show how, even in the absence of a market, the strategies implemented by design, especially in a context far-removed from the “classic” ones but close to the latest new technical-cultural instances, can formulate design hypotheses for original and innovative product-systems capable of generating solutions that can be adopted by a new, specially-created market, as well as to business ideas.