MODERN FLATS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXV, Issue 299, 4 December 1935, Page 11

MODERN FLATS

Elimination of Noise

'The enormous increase in the num her of flats during the past few years is responsible for complaints concerning uoisc, almost as much perhaps as is the wireless, or the meclianicallypropclled vehicle, states a writer in an English paper. If neither of the latter were there the thin walls of the modern flat, and the resonance of the material used, would bring to an intolerable pitch the knocking out of a pipe or the thump of a step along a passage above and on every side of a particular flat.

But people who complain of modern noise forget the old piano, the daily practising, the recurrence of the same false note, and the “One,two, three, lour; one- two-three, four” of compulsory music. If houses could be made quieter there would be far less coiuplaint of public noises, though these also could be improved out of all knowledge were the various existing restrictions really applied. Public noises, on the whole, are more bearable than those which can be •attached to any particular person, and therefore could possibly be avoided On the other hand, to cultivate silence is also a depressing business. One does not want to live a tip-toe life or conduct oneself as though there were a death in the house The remedy is clearly in the noiseproof house, to which scientists have long been turning their attention, aud which may at length engage the attention of the builders and architects, The footsteps overhead, the wireless through the next wall, the vocal exercises of an unpotential prinia donna—all these things would at least be damped down in the sound-proof flat. Most of all, there would be a feeling that something had been tried to cope with one of the tortures of an enlightened era.