Why restaurants became so loud
vox.com
vox.com
Mitigating the kind of noise restaurants can create isn't expensive. There's an off the shelf engineered solution that's been around for almost 70 years. Acoustic ceiling tiles. Restaurants are loud because acoustic ceiling tiles are out of fashion even though significantly less expensive than hard surfaces and exposed building services+structure if painted.[1] Though carpeting and upholstery help, acoustic treatment of the ceiling is the first line of noise mitigation. [2]
[1]: Among the most costly finishes are services and structures fabricated to aesthetic criteria.
[2]: The stylistic trend away from acoustic ceiling tile, carpets, and upholstery further erodes acoustic privacy in open offices.
Acoustic ceiling tile is pretty horrible from an interior design perspective...
Music is aesthetic sound, so you have a point, but most architects consider acoustics as something functional like temperature or ventilation. It's really rare for a space to be conceptualized in terms of a particular desired acoustic, except for theatres and concert halls.
I remembered something the architect Peter Zumthor said, which is quoted in this article: https://www.dwell.com/article/the-world-of-sound-2b3fbcf7
give it 5 years and people will tire of it and go back to drop ceilings with proper lighting and proper ac. (and while i'm ranting, what it with those terrible weak led filament bulbs. god damn whatever it is they do, it isn't adding light).
Those same dim lights are likely quite bright after closing during cleanup when the staff wants to be able to see better.
That's not the way that architects think, it's a common current design fashion (and what we are discussing is interior design, not really architecture.)
> So painting or otherwise decorating acoustic tiles is not an attractive option.
It's absolutely an attractive option if naked elements don't support the ambience the occupant of the space wants. Which is why, despite the current popularity of the bare-services look, it is far from universal even in current (re)designs of spaces.
> The exposed ductwork thing is about not concealing (potentially messy) services.
Yes, and that design trend is fairly recent, especially in it's application to dining establishments.
> It's not just a fashion,
Yes, it is.
> it's a kind of moral imperative,
That's not as much of a difference as you seem to think: morality is in a very real sense just behavioral aesthetics; the broad outlines of morality may be fairly slow preferences to change, but you can find fairly slow to change elements in most domains of aesthetic. The attractiveness of the raw industrial look in interior design, however, is not among them, no matter how one might dress it up in language of morality.
> That's not the way that architects think, it's a common current design fashion (and what we are discussing is interior design, not really architecture.)
It is practically the definition of being an architect to be concerned with truth to materials. No architect wants to be accused of designing paper-thin stage sets, dishonest buildings, things that don't actually work. It's important to distinguish (because this is a distinction that's very important in architectural culture) between the essential structure/function of a building, and features that are merely styling/cladding. The latter are to be avoided. This goes back to the beginning of architecture: a good building is decorated construction, not constructed decoration. Even those architects among the postmodernists who are worth seriously considering played by these rules. (There might be a few perverse PoMo exceptions)
An interior designer can't specify the details of exposed services, so this isn't really part of interior design (and anyway the idea of having exposed services comes from architecture) any more than a model holding an iPhone on the catwalk is part of fashion design.
> > So painting or otherwise decorating acoustic tiles is not an attractive option.
> It's absolutely an attractive option if naked elements don't support the ambience the occupant of the space wants. Which is why, despite the current popularity of the bare-services look, it is far from universal even in current (re)designs of spaces.
I meant attractive to architects.
> > The exposed ductwork thing is about not concealing (potentially messy) services.
> Yes, and that design trend is fairly recent, especially in it's application to dining establishments.
The specific "exposed services" trend is hot right now, but the idea of honest construction, truth to materials, form follows function, etc., really dates to the late 19th C. William Morris saw the shoddiness of mass-produced items (e.g. furniture) and called for a return to honest, simple, direct construction. Adolf Loos wrote about the redundancy of ornament, and the falseness of cladding (specifically, of making a material appear to be something it was not). The modern movement came out of an idea that that the customary, superficial, imitative forms of elaborate 19th C architecture could be replaced by a natural geometric simplicity. As Louis Sullivan said in 1892:
‘I should say that it would be greatly for the aesthetic good if we should refrain entirely from the use of ornament for a period of years, in order that our thoughts might concentrate acutely upon the production of building well formed and comely in the nude. We should thus perforce eschew many undesirable things, and learn by contrast how effective it is to think in a natural, vigorous and wholesome way. This step taken, we might safely inquire to what extent, a decorative application of ornament would enhance the beauty of our structures-what new charm it would give them.’
Exposed services, which have been a thing since the 50s, coming after the intentional rawness of brutalism (for example, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowellism), are just an iteration of this impulse. For architects, carefully assembled "naked" services express and celebrate this natural honesty, functionality and directness. It's arguably an unjustified extra expense to get the services "right" (neat and tidy), but on the other hand, there's the long-standing traditional Medieval idea that even things that are out of public view will be seen by God, so they should be properly attended to anyway. This principle is a matter of thoroughness, probity and ethics.
> > It's not just a fashion,
> Yes, it is.
If I'd said "it's not a fashion", I'd have been asking to be corrected. But I said "it's not just a fashion", which is a very generous and weak constraint on what is going on–it's certainly visible right now as a fashion, but I'm claiming there's more to it than that, a history, a theoretical hinterland.
> > it's a kind of moral imperative,
> That's not as much of a difference as you seem to think: morality is in a very real sense just behavioral aesthetics; the broad outlines of morality may be fairly slow preferences to change, but you can find fairly slow to change elements in most domains of aesthetic. The attractiveness of the raw industrial look in interior design, however, is not among them, no matter how one might dress it up in language of morality.
I'm not going to claim that I can reduce the philosophy of morality to one sentence, as you have. It's definitely the case that ethics and aesthetics both concern judgements of value. (Historically they would both have been considered under the heading of axiology.) Subsuming morality under aesthetics makes it something personal and sort of implies the transcendence of the judging subject, because only subjects have aesthetic experience. It is IMO very iffy, close to an https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aestheticization_of_politics.
For architects, truth to materials is a "moral" imperative because it's thought of in terms of honesty, or a judgement of what is good rather than what is tasteful. I'm not making any broader claim that morality is unchanging. But this is a very long-running architectural design value, which just happens to be manifesting itself in certain conspicuous trendy ways at the moment. It's not a matter of "dressing up [the conversation] in the language of morality"; if you believe architecture is more than just eye candy, you can't avoid considering morality.
So we can agree that exposed services is often just a decision made on superficial aesthetic grounds. But IMO the reason why they are considered appealing has a lot to do with very deep-seated ideas about ethics and right conduct, and as you say yourself, those ideas change slowly.
The idea that functional items can be designed in a way that avoids ephemeral styling or fashions (think of the annual model changes in the US car industry of the 50s) is a key modernist principle. Whether it's actually possible to draw that distinction and maintain it in practice is a totally different question.
So I wrote a long reply which supports my initial argument that "architects think like this". Not saying whether I agree with them.
That reply has received multiple abrupt aggressive responses: "architects are liars", "if an architect focuses on theory and fails to please the audience, he is incompetent", and now that my description is "conservative" and worse.
It's like the legend of the hydra, honestly.
My comment was intended as a historical overview. If you know of a significant school of thought in architecture that is profoundly radical, progressive, hedonistic in ways that are in conflict with the moralistic principles that I was attributing to architectural aesthetics, I'd love to hear about it.
Historically that’s mostly been decorating functional elements, but today that includes hiding security features or playing with perspective etc.
The white hospital-style stuff, sure, but I've seen nice looking black ones and ones that look quite convincingly like tin ceilings.
I figure that you could use similar, aesthetically pleasing (e.g., coloured) elements in a restaurant setting.
[1] https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/bau/images/gebaeude-x-6.jpg
[2] https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/bau/images/mensa_1_gross.jpg
I mean, it's still worse than a cube farm under a conventional acoustical tiled ceiling, but it is a hell of a lot better than nothing, and conforms to the visual standards of the day, (or at least i think it does; It was built out very recently.)
As with most anything, it's probably easier to incorporate them into a new design from the start then to fit them into an existing space that wasn't designed to accommodate them.
2. In addition to being unattractive, another reason acoustic ceiling tiles aren't popular is that they are difficult to clean compared to smooth, hard surfaces. There are acoustic surface finishes from brands like Pyrok and BASWA that can be cleaned with industrial cleaners, but those finishes are expensive to install.
...anyway, tiles outperform what most designers are capable of coming up with on their own and do so with little or no consideration on the designer's part. Loud restaurants largely reflect little or no consideration in the face of changing fashions. Then again, the restaurant business is so iffy that careful attention to acoustics is probably premature optimization. In five years it won't matter because the restaurant will be gone.
I fail to believe that restaurants are getting up into their exposed industrial design ceiling spaces and doing good cleaning.
Since much of the clientele aged with me, the owner one day decided to have a professional company place the acoustic ceiling tiles: it was breath taking wholesome.
Not ugly (it integrated nicely with the curved ceiling) and incredibly effective. Since then, I have no patience or tolerance for restaurants & bars that echo.
Because of this, I have become so aware of the sheer amount of noise in everyday environments. I remember sitting in a nice, peaceful environment for twenty minutes waiting for the local coffee shop to open. Come 8am they turned on the loud, thumping music. Why, why, WHY?
[1] http://www.dineenwestcottmoore.com.au/specialist-services/hy...
But, it's funny because so many Americans think Italians are loud. They're much quieter when eating out. And other cultures, like the English and Dutch talk basically in whispers.
And living in California where there's a law for everything. It's gotta be bad for your hearing. Which brings me to another question. I wonder why CALOSHA hasn't done anything about it?
Maybe the same reason that the fire department doesn't do anything about all the locked doors with the sign above that says "These doors shall remain unlocked during business hours". Apparently public servants are only required enforce laws against the homeless and kids riding without helmets to junior life guards ... and people who point out stuff they're supposed to be doing...Uh oh.
My girlfriend is American and I don't think she realized the difference until I called her attention to it. It's just a cultural issue.
Then she learned about the "1 meter voice" that her kids get thought in school. Once she got the concept she too was able to speak in a "decent voice".
Load voices are partly culture, partly self awareness.
I've spent much time in the Netherlands in cafes, restaurants and bars and never once have I been struck by just how much quieter it was or the Dutch were.
>"My girlfriend is American and I don't think she realized the difference until I called her attention to it. It's just a cultural issue."
Honestly, this and the rest of your comments sound more like a "cultural superiority" issue on your part.
> D: "Betalen? Kunnen we betalen?"
> I: "Scusi?"
> D: "BE-TALEN! IK WIL AF-RE-KE-NEN!"
> I: "?"Obviously this isn't going to overcome complete ignorance of a language. But especially in touristy areas it's common for locals to know a few dozen words in several languages. My experience has been that people speaking loudly and slow makes it much easier for others to latch on to the few words they do know.
I don't think there are any physiological reasons, it just seems to be a minor cultural difference, but I wonder what the reasons are. The school system, maybe? College?
Another small difference I've noticed over the years, and, again, I don't mean this in any disrespectful way: Some if not many US Americans don't know how to use knife and fork in the "European way". They don't know how to turn the fork elegantly after cutting meat. Instead, they cut everything first and then use the fork in the right hand for eating. This must have historical reasons, maybe it also differs from state to state?
I am European too, but I heard this from an American. A knife is a weapon. They try to quickly get it out of their hand, in order that everyone else is able to relax.
Many Americans don’t learn to properly use a knife and fork because of the ubiquity of fast food - many of us never really have to.
Go to a part of the country that’s upper SES, everyone knows how to properly use a knife and fork.
I think I eat the "American way" here in Brazil. I eat rice and beans almost every lunch and I just have to use the fork as a spoon..
-edit-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fypq2qhRZnI Also worth noting that both ways are considered good etiquette in this video, but considered childish by most people commenting.
The european way seems to a piece of meat in the end of the fork to "hold" the vegetables/rice - but this would depend on always having meat available until you finish the plate? Its complex...
Edit: spent 10 minutes googling for the right Miss Manners link, but failed. However I may be wrong on the shovel thing, that may actually be encouraged, I'm not sure.
My casual adult practices and lost memories would definitely disappoint my maternal ancestors... My mother was from a mixed family of blue-bloods from the US northeast and German immigrants a couple generations removed. She probably married "down" with my father, my inculcation thus diluted. She didn't talk about it much, but I think there was some pressure to conform to those blue blood ways within her extended family. I believe her sister was involved in the Daughters of the American Revolution and was also put through some sort of finishing school when young. I hear an odd echo of that aunt whenever I hear Martha Stewart speak. I remember events with very formal table settings when I was a small child, though I have forgotten many of the procedural details for upwards of 5 utensils per place.
All of this is to say: it is a formal cultural practice at least in parts of the US, not some absence of training. I would also believe it has some origins in a display of disarming, much like a hand-shake and other rituals. I wonder if anyone from the UK can comment on whether there are notable regional or class-based practices and any that seem to match the American method described here. I would expect there were British roots, though it might have died out.
More practically, the US method limits eating to a polite pace. Out of context, European and East Asian eating methods look extremely crude to an American eye, with people shoveling, lapping, and slurping food towards their faces. In context, I of course realize they are culturally expected and my American way would seem odd or perhaps even disdainful.
As an aside, I found it interesting to learn how Thai people use a fork and spoon. They use a spoon in their right hand much like an American uses a fork, except they may keep a fork ready in the left to assist in loading much like a European uses their knife (but with hands reversed). But, if an item needs to be cut, the spoon is suddenly a knife without any hand switching and the fork may control the item as it does in American hands.
It would indeed be interesting to know if there used to be regional variants in the UK. Actually, do you have a feeling for whether this has strong regional ties in the US, e.g. to Virginia vs Boston?
Obligatory book plug: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion%27s_Seed (as long as you have a decent tolerance academic writing) and http://www.colinwoodard.com/americannations.html (some overlap, much less formal).
(In case you circle back to this vital topic!)
I eat my peas with honey
I've done it all my life
It does taste kind of funny,
but it keeps them on the knife.Part of me thinks that the idea of a noisy atmosphere is to cause confusion, and confused customers are probably better customers. If they're getting all their enjoyment out of conversations, maybe they're less likely to buy more food and drinks to "smooth over" and "lubricate" their interactions.
I particularly despise live music (restaurant can't even try to adjust volume there), which all of the establishments in my area are competing to have as often as possible.
That's odd. Must be culture/country-dependent? Even in the relatively small town closeby (100k inhabitants) there's a choice of multiple small and not too expensive restaurants. Because of the size (max abot 20 to 30 people dining, plus no loud music) it never gets very loud. There's also a choice of quite expensive ones which, large or not, do take acoustics into account and hence remain comfortable.
Romans are generally louder then people from Milan, but often foreigners are louder than us, especially South Americans and Americans (from USA).
On the contrary, Chinese and northern African are quiter.
French sound nicher to many, so they usually don't notice their loudness, but in my experience they usually make more noise than Italians, are more rude with the waiters and complain a lot.
I think it all depends on the setup, Italian restaurant are usually family businesses, cheap enough that you could eat there everyday, where tables are mostly very close to one another, if you are too loud people at other tables can easily be annoyed by the noise, while French restaurant have more space between tables and they feel free to turn the volume up a bit and it becomes an habit.
I am personally a very private person and I don't like being loud cause I don't want other people's to listen to what I'm saying, which is very easy if the other table is literally 50 cm away, and have developed an habit of being extremely quite, such as I have a very hard time having a normal conversation when I'm abroad and everyone scream (for my standards)
It is true tough that we are famous for "making a scene" it's not uncommon to go to the restaurant and find a couple fighting loudly
I put Italians in the middle of the bar, on average.
You can sometimes cross the street and the environment in a cafe is the complete opposite.
I noticed this and thought maybe it's because in the bay area there are a lot of choices for everything (restaurants, cafes) so everyone gets in their little niche. Maybe in your place of origin there is less variety?
Outdoors things are changing too - tax on tobacco is ever increasing, even if it's still relatively cheap in some European countries, and more people are conscious of the damage smoking does to their bodies. Additionally, a lot of smokers, especially in more affluent European countries, have switched to vaping.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_cigaret...
That's because these f are blowing stinking odours in everybody's faces and clothes. Yes, even outside. I strongly defend that my right to fresh air trumps their right to smoke and annoy a whole terrace.
I suspect that the observation by Taleb that high status people talk more softly needs a caveat. I think people who know they have status talk more softly to convey that they don't have to fight for attention. And such signaling naturally requires the situation allow people to notice.
Which is to say in that in a more primal situation, where no one knows anyone's status, being loud and aggressive is the way to gain status when status is not yet established. And this seems like source of American loudness, America being a nation where many seek status and the hierarchy of status is often not established.
What’s really rare and ultra expensive is making both at once. Create a space with clean surfaces, high ceilings, etc and still manage acoustics.
That’s where restaurants fail. And I get that they fail because if quiet+pretty is too expensive, then in the choice between quiet and pretty you will do better going for pretty. Because as much as people complain about noise, we never even visited the quiet place with fitted carpets and acoustic tiles.
A related observation I made was that light really makes people loud. I recently had breakfast in a hotel that made an unusual design choice: a very dark candle lit space was used as the breakfast restaurant. Despite being full of people, most were naturally whispering. But light is just another design element. If you design with lots of light, you also get louder conversation (at least that is my observation based on just a few data points).
The volume was so loud and the music so intense I actually had to stop at times and block my ears. This sounds melodramatic but it is honestly ridiculous.
After those few classes I went to I would have ringing in my ears for a few hours, and my ears would feel very blocked. I also noticed I became a lot more agitated and anxious afterwards.
There's a barracks that is literally a mile away from us in our city, they had a party and the music was loud enough that it woke children in our street ... that has to be damaging prole hearing who are close-by.
A lot of misinformation too (eg: "it's okay,above a certain threshold the ears close themselves, that's why you feel a bit deaf for a day or two after a concert).
(Loud sounds are not for everybody, but if you like the class but it is annoyed by the sound it could have been an option)
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/31/17393394/sp...
They're often promoted for firearms use. However I don't own a gun and I enjoy mine for loud clubs and the like.
(I know, loaded question :)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17604501
Grant Achatz went out and solicited playlist ideas from the public when opening Roister in Chicago
https://chicago.eater.com/2015/11/4/9670684/roister-music-cr...
It's simple. The music is now part of the decor. It must be heard at all costs, so up goes the volume once people fill the place. Then it becomes a positive feedback loop of people shouting to hear each other speak, volume goes up again, and everyone goes deaf.
do what I do and keep earplugs around your neck wherever you go. they're more effective at reducing anxiety than any other remedy
Aging ears will tell you the world sounds worse each year.
But think tinnitus and inability to filter out background noise is often the worse of it.
I'll admit to not have any deep knowledge. I do remain firmly opposed to determining noise trend in society based on sampling your own aging ears!
[0] https://www.bose.com/en_us/products/wellness/conversation_en...
My only criticism is that they use HSP during phone calls, then switch back to A2DP when music/audio resumes. This means that audio quality during phone calls is significantly worse than normal audio output, but this occurs with every bluetooth headset I have tried.
E.g. in Android, I think Oreo finally added some HFP 1.6 support, and 16kz SCO output should be theoretically possible (I wasn't able to get it to work). But for some reason, 8khz SCO input remains explicitly unsupported, as per the AudioManager doc:
> "The following restrictions apply on [SCO] input streams: [...] the sampling must be 8kHz"
From what I've seen, most bluetooth devices and cellular providers don't seem to support 16khz speech either. At this rate, it seems like most of us won't enjoy wide band bluetooth calls until 2030 or so.
[0] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04...
You are hitting your nail straight on the head, my friend.
Main culprit is: Unfinished ceiling/metallic ceilings (usually corrugated steel pannels, either square or triangular profile pattern).
It's very trendy now to have exposed mechanical equipment and venting, people do not bat an eye anymore. Been ok for about 25 years now. Source: me, working in the business, I specifically avoid any public place with such unfinished ceilings. I cannot stand it anymore!
I’ve gone to restaurants and after being seated found the conditions unpleasant enough that we get up, apologize (“it’s too cold/loud/etc”) and leave.
Maybe I just got lucky that particular evening, but it really stuck in my memory as a good experience.
It's almost like the local building codes, or the air or something else conspires to make the acoustics in every single place we've tried completely miserable - even when it's not very busy.
I'd love to discover why it seems to be the case.
What I've seen over the decades is those others going out of business and being replaced by either the glossy, clean style or the unfinished industrial style. Nobody is using soft materials which remind too much of our fathers' or grandfathers' banquet halls and family restaurants.
Industrial design looks intentional (ie. Not necessarily good, but it looks like it's supposed to be that way) and is inexpensive.
Obviously this doesn't exactly address the root of the problem, which is that restaurants shouldn't require the kind of PPE that you'd have at a concert venue.
I wear them in the car, in the bus, on the train, at a loud restaurant (can still hear friends), at concerts, in the datacenter.
I never expected them to be so comfortable. It feels completely natural now to pop them in if I'm feeling like the enviornmental sounds are higher than desirable.
Mine are 20db
expect to pay 100-200 for custom molded ones. if you want inexpensive ones that are still pretty decent and low profile, I recommend Hearos. barely visible when they're in.
Would you care sharing more details about your favorite brand? (ex: exact model)
[1] https://www.honeywellsafety.com/Products/Hearing/Hearing_Pro...
Vote with your feet and wallet.
Start by asking the staff to turn down the music. Then ask the manager. When it is still too loud, tell the manager why on the way out. And then leave negative reviews about the noise on Trip Advisor and Yelp...
I do go to a few places specifically because they are relatively quiet, even when busy.
And this is coming from someone who loves heavy metal and goes to some pretty loud concerts. But there’s a time and a place for it.
What I struggle with is hearing the conversation with the person across the table from me, what has actually recently helped is running a device with iOS 12 (beta) and using AirPods (https://www.engadget.com/2018/06/05/live-listen-ios-12-apple...) - it actually works pretty damn well, I just feel like a bit of a jerk wearing ear buds while dining / having a wine.
https://smile.amazon.com/EarPeace-Concert-Ear-Plugs-Protecti...
I always avoid loud restaurants and bars when given a choice, but if there is a work event I need to go to then they are useful. It's annoying carrying them around when I rarely use them, but it's better than giving yourself permanent hearing damage just because you need to go to a (poorly organized) meetup or whatever.
I hate the modern "stark industrial" design trend in modern eating establishments. All that concrete and bare wood just act as echo reflections and harmonic cacophony.
I hope more follow suit.
I think it's part of a wider problem that either a) people might now require too much stimulation or management has concerns that there's not enough stimulation for their customers.
And loud machines like blenders and coffee machines.
Also the tipping culture in North America really needs to go. It's prohibitive. Just take a look at Asia. People eat out more because people are not tipped. Of course North America is expensive. So why not create a livable wage and happy staff? Oh right, food industry is cutt throat and low margins.
It seems likely that this would explain a good bit of the anecdotal evidence supporting this.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/soundprint-find-a-quiet-spot...
Not sure if it's available on Android but I"m sure there is something similar.