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An Urban Continuing Care Retirement Community Of The Twenty First Century, Michael W. Isaac Dec 2014

An Urban Continuing Care Retirement Community Of The Twenty First Century, Michael W. Isaac

Architecture Masters of Science Program: Theses

Maximizing the land-use potential in crowded urban areas by the creation of mixed-use developments built in a high-rise format is more important than ever. In urban environments with high building density the little land that does become available for development must be utilized in a manner not only efficient, but to meet the needs of the community it is constructed within. As the baby boomer generation enters retirement, the senior housing market will experience growth to accommodate the need. Developing senior housing that will provide desirable attributes expected by this generation is necessary. In the urban environment the development of …


Designing Acoustics For Linguistically Diverse Classrooms: Effects Of Background Noise, Reverberation And Talker Foreign Accent On Speech Comprehension By Native And Non-Native English-Speaking Listeners, Z. Ellen Peng Dec 2014

Designing Acoustics For Linguistically Diverse Classrooms: Effects Of Background Noise, Reverberation And Talker Foreign Accent On Speech Comprehension By Native And Non-Native English-Speaking Listeners, Z. Ellen Peng

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The current classroom acoustics standard (ANSI S12.60-2010) recommends core learning spaces not to exceed background noise level (BNL) of 35 dBA and reverberation time (RT) of 0.6 second, based on speech intelligibility performance mainly by the native English-speaking population. Existing literature has not correlated these recommended values well with student learning outcomes. With a growing population of non-native English speakers in American classrooms, the special needs for perceiving degraded speech among non-native listeners, either due to realistic room acoustics or talker foreign accent, have not been addressed in the current standard. This research seeks to investigate the effects of BNL …