This project was the acoustic renovation of the multi-function hall of a senior university. The hall undertakes daily teaching, cultural performances, lectures and other activities for elderly students. Due to the large space and hard wall surfaces, the mid-low frequency reverberation is prominent, resulting in blurred speech and heavy bass. Elderly students with degraded hearing often cannot hear the content of lectures and performances clearly, which cannot meet the needs of age-friendly teaching.

The design team adopted a combined scheme of grooved acoustic panels and perforated acoustic panels for side wall and back wall treatment. Based on the Helmholtz resonance principle, the two panels are precisely matched according to the space volume and the hearing characteristics of the elderly, targeting the 250Hz–1000Hz mid-low frequency noise that most affects speech clarity. With the rear air cavity and mineral wool backing, the overall NRC reaches 0.90, realizing full-band balanced sound absorption and significantly improving language clarity.

The wood veneer panels have a warm and simple appearance, which fits the comfortable and peaceful positioning of the senior university. After the transformation, the acoustic test shows that the reverberation time is optimized to the optimal range for the elderly, and the speech intelligibility is increased by 38%. Both daily teaching and cultural and entertainment activities can achieve clear and uniform listening effects, which effectively improves the learning experience of elderly students and becomes a demonstration project for age-friendly acoustic transformation.