Bimodal Interaction: The Role of Visual Information in Performing Acoustic Assessment in Architecture

In the framework of the design process of a multimodal 3D simulation environment to support architects’ acoustic tasks, we wanted to gain a better understanding of how architects are able to discriminate the sounds using audio and/or visual inputs. This study explores how 2D pictures of rooms do support or impede the auditory evaluation of a space (specifically reverberation). The paper describes an experiment evaluating participants rankings of perceived acoustic reverberation when presented with congruent (coherent) or non-congruent (conflicting) evocative pictures of architectural spaces. We found that the congruent pictures had a positive impact on task performance while the noncongruent pictures had no significant effect. Moreover the effect of the expertise (professional background) of participants was investigated. We found differences between architects and non-architects in the way they performed the task, and they processed reverberation assessments. Taken together, the findings of this study contribute to the question of usefulness of expensive multimodal 3D simulation environment.