Soundscape In Han Chinesebuddhist Temples

For over two thousand years,Han Chinese Buddhist temple has been one of the most important public building types in China. Nowadays those temples become the most important samples for the research of Chinese historical architecture, given the highest number among the preserved ancient buildings. A favorable physical environment plays a crucial role in rendering religious atmosphere of Buddhist temples,and especially the sound environment is quite impressive for people. In recent years, Han Chinese Buddhism has been developing quickly in China, reflected by both protection of traditional temples and construction of a large number of new temples. However, the sound environment both inside and outside the temple is often overlooked, and there are limited researches in this area.Soundscape is a new research field in the area of building science and technology. Different from the traditional acoustic research, it highlights people’s perception of sound in specific situation, and focuses on three aspects, i.e., sound, sound field and person’s assessment. This research focused on the soundscape in Han Chinese Buddhist temples. Based on soundscape theories and relative survey methods, the research tried to explore the soundscapes in Han Chinese Buddhist Temple in both quantitative and qualitative ways through analysis of differenct data sources, including literature review, sound recording and analyzing, sound environment measuring, broad scale questionnaire investigation in four typical temples and the sound field simulated using acoustic software, The aim of the research is to reveal the feasible approach to create favorable soundscapes in Han Chinese Buddhist Temple..First of all, the documents and records in relation to sound and sound environment inside and outside the Han Chinese Buddhist temple were compiled. The soundscapes in the temples were described from three aspects, including Brahma voice, sound field and the assessment of temple sound environment in ancient literature. Three characters of the soundscapes were summarized: Periodicity, which means that soundscape in Buddhist temple circulates regularly by the periods of days and years; Territoriality, which includes the north-south and scale difference; Localization and secularization, which is the inevitable result of the Buddhism development in China. Some special acoustic phenomena were introduced, including the utilization of echoes and the natural environment, as well as Matin Bells and vesper drums.Then, the acoustic parameters of different sounds in the studied temples and the condition of their sound environment were studied. Through quantitative analysis of the recorded Brahma voice and the sound environment in the temples in software, the results showed that the characteristics of various kinds of sound reflected by physical and psychological acoustic parameters such as sound pressure level, sharpness and loudness and so on, were normally in accordance with their relative functions. There is an obvious difference between the sound environment inside and outside temple. Specifically, the difference in instantaneous sound level was more than 67 d BA, according to the measurement in the courtyard of the Grand halls at different times; the difference between the average sound level throughout the day in different locations of the temples was more than 11 d BA, and the reverberation time of RT30 in middle frequency measured in three Grand halls ranged from 0.65 to 1.1 seconds.Furthermore, the research revealed how different groups evaluate the Buddhist temples’ soundscapes and the influential factors. According to the analysis results of 685 effective questionnaires collected in the temples, the overall soundscapes in the temples were usually highly evaluated. Several factors were found significantly related to the evaluation of quietness, comfortness and coordination degree, including the objective factors such as the measured sound level and type of temples, and the subjective factors such as the respondents’ age, occupation, education level and religious belief, with the absolute values of correlation coefficients ranged from 0.15 to 0.45. Among various objective sound parameters, only sharpness showed significant correlation with the sound preference, with a correlation coefficient of 0.531(p<0.05).Moreover, the research explored the effect of the spatial elements in temple on the sound field in the courtyard and Buddha Hall. The acoustic models were built to analyze the factors which might influence the temple’s sound field. It indicated that, on condition that bells were chosen as sound source, the spatial elements including the height, sound-absorbing and sound-reflection coefficient of the wall, the distance between the walls in the courtyard, as well as the location and height of the bell tower, showed significant effects on the soundscapes in the temples. Studies on interior sound field of the Grand Hall showed that Buddhist could play an important role in reflecting sounds, especially sculptures near the side wall might significantly influence the reverberation time and STI value. The textile appliances arrayed in the Hall could function as sound absorbers, mainly affecting reverberation time RT30 and EDT. However, there was limited effect from these sound absorbers and reflectors on sound pressure level. The sound source directivity showed major effects on the parameter C80 and EDT of the sound field.Finally, based on the aforementioned analysis, the composition of soundscape artistic conception in Han Chinese Buddhist temple was clarified and the method of creating these special soundscapes was proposed. The definition of soundscape artistic conception was given, and further clarified that this conception consists of two parts, namely reality(soundscape function) and imaginary(soundscape art). Soundscape elements in Buddhist Temple including man-made sounds, natural sounds and stillness formed three kinds of artistic conception respectively. Three kinds of approach suitable for soundscape creation outside the temple, inside the courtyard of temple, and inside the hall were proposed, namely harmonious nature, rational distribution, and reasonable details, respectively.Through literature review and field research in the typical temples, combining analysis of acoustic parameters, questionnaire investigation and simulation of the temples’ sound fields, the research adopted both quantitative and qualitative analysis approaches on soundscapes in Han Chinese Buddhist temples in terms of the three soundscape elements. The research represented an interdisciplinary research in the science of architecture history and soundscape, combining research findings from other relevant fields such as psychology of religion, landscape, environmental science, etc.. This research was supposed to help understanding the history and development of soundscapes in Han Chinese Buddhist temples, broaden the research scope of architecture history and soundscape, build an organic connection among Buddhist architectures, soundscape and religious cultural, and contribute to the establishment of religious soundscape theory in China and the protection of soundscapes in traditional Buddhist temples.