Friday, November 30, 2018
How Restaurants Got So Loud
The Atlantic: Let me describe what I hear as I sit in a coffee shop writing this article. It’s late morning on a Saturday, between the breakfast and lunch rushes. People talk in hushed voices at tables. The staff make pithy jokes amongst themselves, enjoying the downtime. Fingers clack on keyboards, and glasses clink against wood and stone countertops. Occasionally, the espresso machines grind and roar. The coffee shop is quiet, probably as quiet as it can be while still being occupied. Even at its slowest and most hushed, the average background noise level hovered around 73 decibels (as measured with my calibrated meter).
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19 comments:
This is a really important concept that is not talked about nearly enough, either in the context of restaurants specifically or in the broader context of architectural design and creating spaces in general. I do not know what it might take to change the direction that restaurants have been going in, but it does need to be addressed, if not by restaurants than by regulatory efforts. Very small steps can be made to make large differences and bring down the noise levels in a room, whether thats adding a tablecloth, closing off the kitchen (which also lessens the pressures for the chefs, kitchen staff, and kitchen to "Look nice" for the customers, allowing them to wear hearing protection or for acoustic deadening measures to be taken in the kitchen), or adding absorbent material on the bottoms of surfaces like tables can make a huge difference. The minor psycho-acoustic advantages that restaurants gain (faster chewing and increased alcohol consumption with high noise levels) are not negligible, but they are ultimately less important than the health of employees who have to work in noisy environments.
I’m not sure I agree with the statement that “designers were startled to discover that they might have some control over the aural impression of a physical space.” If you look at architecture going all the way back to the ancient Greeks, designers of architecture have always known that how they build a building affects the sound of a space. I think perhaps designers decided in the early to mid 20th-century to take these concepts they already knew and use them to make more accommodating and pleasant acoustical spaces for day to day life. That being said, acousticians and how they can help with architectural things is maybe one of my favorite topics. I recently listened to a podcast in which an acoustician was describing a large library where the circulation desk was to be put in the dead center of this grand rotunda and at the last minute they brought an acoustician in and he went “ah yes, with these measurements, they will never hear anything, you need to tuck the desk away under this mezzanine if you expect them to be able to work. By this point the building was built so they moved the desk and then in the middle of this gorgeous rotunda they now have stations to guide people to where to go. It transforms an otherwise gorgeous space into kind of weird. But if designers and architects would bring an acoustician in earlier, perhaps some of these faux pas can be avoided by the simple addition of early planning and collaboration.
I am someone who likes silence, so I always notice the noise level when I am out to eat. I hadn't given much thought to the design of restaurants and how that influences to noise, which is very true. When I think about the places that are louder it is not always just more tables crammed tightly together, it is a just a large open space will minimal sound absorption materials. While I do think it is something designers and architects consider when building, I think it is just about priorities. The owners of the restaurant are probably just making the choice that they would rather have wooden floor with clean walls then fabrics everywhere and less noise. Which in this century makes sense, because we are people are constantly around more noise, weather it is the personal choice to have head phones in or just the amount of noise generated by cars, airplanes, and factories in the background of where ever you are.
I agree with this writer. I would love to see a return of casual, quieter, and more traditional dining. I love the trend of modern and aesthetically pleasing architecture as it adds a lightness and simple beauty that exudes luxury to everyday life, but I find that with the rise of these modern establishments comes a discomfort associated with a place. For me, loud dining is a particularly difficult situation that my family must avoid. My uncle has late stage Parkinson’s and has extreme difficulty communicating. If we want to eat out, we have to find a place that is not only quiet, but also comfortable. This leaves us with very few options and makes dining out a struggle instead of a luxury. Within the world of casual dining, restaurants need to consider the functionality of their space instead of just the design aspect, and sound is a crucial part of that design choice.
So, I just went out to dinner at Union Grill on Craig. It was 5:30, so pretty early for the dinner rush. The place was packed to the gills with people. And pretty loud. Not terrible, I was able to have a conversation with my date. Although thinking back now, I am able to remember the decor. There are lots of booths in Union Grill, and all the chairs have upholstery on them, as do the bar stools. Also, every table has a cloth table cloth on them. And, everyone there wore a coat, so there was a lot of sound objects to absorb the sound. Although, I absolutely agree with this article. So many restaurants are all hard surfaces and it gets so freaking loud in there all the time. I agree again, these places do look amazing, and are great to look around in, but I feel like they are really only truly enjoyable during off hours for eating.
When I first saw the title of this article I was expecting it to be some rant about how people talk too loud at restaurants and our society has gotten less polite than it used to be or some similar rant. As it turns out, the article was actually really interesting. While it makes sense that restaurants are acoustically different given more recent interior design aesthetics, I never considered it before, and if you had asked me to come up with a reason why restaurants have gotten louder over the course of the last however many years, I probably wouldn’t have guessed it. This makes me hope that a more austocially absorbent interior design aesthetic starts becoming more popular since I definitely would like to hear what people are saying when I go out for dinner and I don’t really care what the building looks like. Time will tell I suppose.
I think it's fascinating that louder restaurants are more profitable and encourage people to eat more unhealthy food. Since loud restaurants are both easier to maintain and and have better profit margins, I would be surprised if the industry changes as the author would like. Especially since restaurants have learned this and tailored their business model. I’m not surprised that restaurant architects don’t include acustians. Their services are probably expensive and designers are probably still under the impression that quiet means ugly. However new trends are always emerging and restaurants where customers eat in pitch black are becoming more popular. Who is to say that completely quiet restaurants will not emerge. A completely quiet restaurant would be more of a niche idea than an industry change. As quiet furniture becomes more well known and cheaper, it will be interesting to see if restaurants decide to be quieter or keep their current volume levels.
This article isn't really about sound, it's about the changing tastes of modern interior decorators. It seems surprised that people tastes change and that the habits of people go with it. Central among its observations is the move from highly ornamental dining halls with plush carpet and hanging drapes, to more sober hard surfaces and with reclaimed wood and metal. When the world did not have the plenty of resources and distribution of wealth that it does now, the wealthy and elite looked to an almost cartoonish level of opulence to satisfy their aesthetic, but now that this sort of decor can be easily attained with smaller expense thanks to the wonders of modern technology, the high class expect other things, they expect the special materials and creative stylings, to create a slick unified aesthetic. It's wild that this article is saying that the noise level is damaging to server's ears.
To me the most alarming part of this article was the comments on how damaging this noise can be to an employee. To me employee health as a priority in 2018 seems like a no brainer especially in restaurant looking to be “high end”. I’m disappointed to find that’s not the case. I’m also surprised and disappointed at the apparent lack of abidance to employee safety regulations. But I also see faults to the authors arguments. Nothing about the plushmess of the room or the placement of the kitchen that can also be large factors, but another aspect that I felt was danced over throughout the article was the integration of bars into restaurants. When I go to an upscale restaurant or really anything above a diner I can barely think of examples without bars. Bars also seem like a huge source of noise between shakers, bottles, ice and conversation. Unlike all of the other issues (plushness, kitchens, etc.) bars seem like a much bigger issue that cannot exactly be fixed with some minor interior changes.
I have a lot of trouble in loud spaces understanding what others are saying and this is one of the reasons I don't like eating out because I always struggle to filter out the other noises. This article makes me feel really validated because it seems that this is a widespread problem throughout the restaurant industry. I didn't, however, realize how much of a problem this is. I was shocked to learn that most restaurants have dangerous decibel levels just during normal operation, not even especially busy times. I wonder if anyone has done a study on the effect this had had on restaurant workers because I believe the negative effects on workers was one of the major drivers in changing the laws on smoking indoors. I don't think that restaurants really have any motivation to change right now because even if customers are annoyed but the noisy atmosphere, they haven't stopped going and the restaurants haven't stopped turning a profit. However, if negative press came out regarding the effects on workers, that might be able to start a change.
This is quite a lengthy explanation and analysis of why spaces are becoming more and louder. People are now beginning to associate the occupied volume with the quality of the place. Along the thought of if there are a lot of people here and it is noisy, it must be good. The thing that I have begun to find unsettling is that architects are starting to design spaces to be louder. They do this by building in more reflective surfaces and moving the bar area close to the main dining area in large restaurants. Where traditionally the bar used to be more tucked around the end not the centerpiece of the whole restaurant. I also think that this overall trend of restaurants becoming louder places can be tied to the fact that people are getting louder in general too. If you go to the library nowadays, it's not uncommon to hear people talking or eating a snack well working on there computer. This is in contrast to ten years ago where most times you could listen to a book close on the other side of the room.
I think that this article does a good job of outlining what the problem actually is here. The author, Kate Wagner, reports that "sparse, modern decor; high, exposed ceilings; and almost no soft goods, such as curtains, upholstery, or carpets" in restaurants are the cause for the sound amplification problem. She continues, "these design features are a feast for the eyes, but a nightmare for the ears. No soft goods and tall ceilings mean nothing is absorbing sound energy, and a room full of hard surfaces serves as a big sonic mirror, reflecting sound around the room." In addition to the decor and space itself, how restaurants are arranged has contributed to the problem. Wagner reports that "as the bar and dining area began to occupy the same space, their clientele and atmospheres combined. . .the result was a lot louder than either one alone. Open-concept restaurants and warehouse-style gourmet food courts have made dining out more casual and communal, but getting rid of the walls, ceilings, and soft goods that once defined luxury have also made them noisier." By putting both dining and drinking together, noise grows and grows, which makes it quite difficult to hear what your drinking buddy or dinner date is saying.
I suppose this trend was something I never noticed, or perhaps attributed to my getting older and thus more annoyed with loud sounds naturally. But the idea that restaurant as a whole are getting louder makes a lot of sense. I know I’ve been in several restaurants and thought, wow I can’t hear anything. This article seems to attribute a lot of that phenomenon to the architecture of the building, and some of it to general dining culture. I agree that this is an issue that needs to be worked out, especially for the health and safety of the employees working long shifts. But I would be hesitant to return to, as the author put it, ‘stuffy fine dining’. Those kinds of places, the one’s where you feel like you have to whisper, are very unwelcoming. On a typical day, if I’m going out with my friends, I want to be able to have a normal conversation with them. And have some music playing in the background. And maybe even get a bit rowdy. I wonder if there’s a way for this kind of dining culture to exist without being unsafe.
I was expecting to find commentary on the demographics of restaurant goers, but I suppose this is more interesting. As students, we rarely eat at anything more upscale than Chipotle, which is economized for moving people through the dining experience quickly. It has lots of hard surfaces because they are easy to clean, but the author shows how the noise level caused by hard surfaces might also stop you from wanting to hang around working. Contrast that to a coffee shop, which the author started the article with and...most of them are still all hard surfaces. I think we are seeing how the days of long, leisurely meals are over, and the days of frantic consumption are upon us. Back to the demographics: I would be curious to see a more detailed analysis of the relative price points of restaurants, their acoustic qualities, and target demographics as each of these metrics have changed over the years.
I have never thought about the sounds that occur in busy places such as a restaurant. I worked in a restaurant as a host and a server’s assistant for a few years and I’m sure I will have some sort of hearing damage from it. The loud bustling environment for 6 hours at a time caused me to have a lot of migraines that I didn’t know the source of at first. While reading the article, I never thought about how much the architectural design affects people's senses so directly. As Maggie said in her comment, the alarming thing about this is the damage done to employees for the sake of aesthetic. I don’t mind being in loud places, but I know a large amount of people are very sensitive to loud noises so even just eating out affects them greatly. Maybe different acoustics and architectural design should be considered when new restaurants are built.
This is a phenomenon I'm definitely experienced when going to restaurants however it has never been a salient part of the experience. I thought it was interesting what the article pointed out about how the decor of restaurants have changed over time and higher class restaurants became dressed with less and less fabrics. The transition of rugs and curtains and ornate decor to sleek tile floors and metallic tables meant that sound absorption changed very drastically without the restaurant owners even knowing. Sound is a powerful sense that can affect how we take in sights and smells and taste as well. Louder environments make us eat faster and I personally really don't enjoy being rushed. I think food should bring us together and part of that is the experience of conversating and eating multiple courses and taking your time. I think restaurants should make an effort to create an environment which allows for conversation and connection over food.
I have actually been looking at a lot of spaces acoustically recently, and I think that it is absolutely fascinating how simple architectural elements can have such a huge effect on how loud the noise floor is in any given space. I have also been looking at acoustics in restaurant, so I found this article particularly interesting. I have been to a few places recently that have acoustic padding under every table, in hopes of absorbing some of the sound, and I have also seen large acoustic panels in the ceiling disguised as decoration or in some cases an actual part of the architecture. I also think that a lot of this does happen because a lot of new restaurants I have seen are using converted spaces, not ones that were organically designed or consistent amounts of people in that capacity. I would love to look into this some more and learn what else can be done about noise in restaurants.
This is a fascinating read in general, but I have some personal interest in the issue because my parents own a restaurant (which gets quite loud on weekend evenings). My father is especially interested in following certain chefs, both up-and-coming and notorious, keeping up on restaurant news, and getting to the highly anticipated new restaurants before the crowds. I absolutely see this shift to a sleek yet rustic sensibility of high ceilings and hard surfaces with more of an emphasis on clean lines than plushy seating. But beyond the environment, another element in which I find great discrepancies are in attitudes towards dining. My family taught me table etiquette, proper use of utensils, the right way to drink from a glass, how to speak to waiters, what to do when something is wrong with a dish-- everything about how to behave in a nice dining situation. These were all taught organically through experience and repetition, and I feel that regardless of the setting of the space, I have a very regular way of behaving in those environments. I think that the culture around dining in general, however, has not been so carefully maintained. I have been to Michelin star restaurants in which kids arrive in their pajamas, men wear jeans, and a raucous family reunion is happening in the middle of a dim, refined space. The respectful attitude of what it means to enjoy a shared experience in a designed establishment to appreciate the culture of eating and the craft of cooking is dying-- and that is undeniably linked to the noisiness of our restaurants.
I never quite realized this over the last few years. Interestingly enough though this weekend, I had an experience that solidified this. Madeline and I ended up at Mad Mex in shady side on a friday night and based on that experience I could have thought that I was going deaf. The sound was DEAFENING at all times. The music was so loud and the sheer quantity of people and the ruckus at the bar all lead to an entire meal of me repeatedly having to say "what" or lean in so close so that I could hear her. I think that this should be something that many consider in the creation of new restaurants and that all small steps be taken in current restaurants too where the struggle is so real.
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