Research On The Restorative Effects Of Soundscape In Urban Public Open Space

With rapid urbanization, buildings and people have become increasingly crowded in cities. Tensions and the tumultuous city lives are putting residents in the psychological state of consumption, which needs some way to restore. Studies in Environmental Psychology have revealed that if the environment has certain positive characteristics, individuals in it would gain good restorative experience. While the opposite will aggravate the consumption. Space features of high-densit y urban areas have caused the lack of high-quality restorative resource. Promotion of environmental restorative of open urban spaces is therefore more practically significant.Hearing, as an indispensable part of people’s cognitive feeling, is not only a basic approach of access to information, but also animportant means of feeling and experiencing the surroundings. "Soundscape" as an important environmental factor, including all the sound in environment which people "willing" and "not willing" to hear, and combination with visual landscape, makeindividuals in the environment havepositive or negative physiological and psychological feelings.Starting with urban residents’ mental health This paper, with ”Environmental Restoration " as the research perspective, high-density Shenyang City as the research sample,advanced the" restorative effect of soundscape " hypothesisthrough literature study and theoretical deduction. On the basis of the analysis of the characteristics of resources in high-density urban environment, the research way was determined. Based oninvestigations of environmental restorative of open space in high-densit y urban areas, by questionnaires and on-spot interviews, determining the residents’ restorative experience and factors of environment al restorative, the thesis clarified the value of soundscape in the environmental restorative. The paper then used the data of soundscapecollected and measured in open space of Shenyang to investigate on soundscape of Shenyang open space and determined typical urban soundscape and its features according to the " universality " and " significance " of soundscape. Laboratory simulations and field experimental researches of soundscape experience were carried on to evaluate subjective soundscape restorative. The dissertation then discussed the law of effect of " physical response " and " attention level” on individuals’ restorative achievement from the surroundings. Finally, taking "sound effect on visual attention" as the point of view, carried on the eye-movement experiment, to probe the additional restorative effect s.This study introduced "restoration theory” of environmental psychology into urban design, providing a fresh perspective for the study of urban open space environment, and discussed the corresponding theory. By soundscape investigation and experimental research, basic information of soundscape was collected. Scientific laws of soundscape restorative in aspects such as individual psychological, physiological and attention level and visual crux were explored and deducted from basic soundscape information through soundscape investigations and experimental research to give basis for enhancing urban soundscape. This research used creatively methods of " survey scheme of soundscape in urban and typical space based on restorative effects”, "subjectiveevaluationmethod of restorative effects of soundscape", "skinconductanceresponseand eyemovementregularity in the application of the empirical research on the restorative effects of soundscape" and "Field experimental methods of restorative effects of soundscape based on attention tests", and exploredthe methodsof researching restorative effects ofsoundscape.