ACOUSTIC STUDY OF SAN JUAN NEPOMUCENO CHURCH

“...hearing for everyone”`

San Juan Nepomuceno Church, Alfonso’s most prominent religious infrastructure built by Jesuit friars on the early 1800’s. It is common among Alfonsenos as the center of the Roman Catholicism in the town of Alfonso. Being the center, the church literally stands at the heart of the Alfonso town proper adjacent to the municipal hall and other prominent family houses.

As time goes by, the church made it through different calamities and other natural disasters and had undergone several renovations. But out of these renovations, acoustics are not given consideration. Acoustics in churches are as important as lighting to libraries and sunlight to plants. Without its acoustic intelligibility, sermons, choir songs, and other vocal used interactions will not be understandable or not heard. It is important to take acoustics into consideration so that the users, the parishioners, and the congregation may be part of the activities inside the church as a catholic community. Common problems in acoustics are found based on analysis and interviews. These problems are: 1.) Outside Noise that penetrates through the walls of the church. 2.) Too much reverberation that results to a muffled and “echo-y” sound. 3.) Imbalanced sound coming from the chruch chorale due to misplacement of the choir area. With this problems, users often do not understand what the Church may be trying to say and causes discomfort or misunderstanding so, acoustic interventions will play its role.

PROJECT TYPE: Research Based - Bachelor Thesis

SITE LOCATION: San Juan Nepomuceno Church, Alfonso, Cavite

Adviser: Ar. Rosauro H. Jamandri, RLA

WORKFLOW: Autodesk Revit + Ecotect Analysis + EaseFocus 3+ Procreate for iPad + Photoshop

The Proposed Ceiling

The proposed ceiling of the San Juan Nepomuceno Church is inspired from Alvar Aalto’s Ceiling from the Viipuri Library. This ceiling uses the concept of optics and therefore applied to sound waves for sound and light are both energy waves traveling through space. The ceiling has a series of concave and convex shapes making it an organic ceiling. The proposed ceiling is made of engineered wood, mechanically scored to bend it. the proposed ceiling will be distributing sound throughout the whole church resulting in a balanced and less reverberated sound.

Mission: Possible Material

The material intervention for the San Juan Nepomuceno Church will have a huge consideration regarding the church’s historical character and the material must not distort the historical adobe walls of the church. The solution will be the application of micro-perforated transparent acoustic sheets. This sheets are engineered to reduce the initial reverberation time of 5.6 seconds to 3 seconds (2 seconds to 3.5 seconds is the ideal RT for churches) with taking consideration to the historical character of the church with the material’s transparent feature.