Architecture is usually judged by what you can see. The stone, the glass, the lighting, the furniture and the impressive staircase that nobody is quite sure how to use. But there is another element quietly deciding how a space actually feels: sound. A bedroom that lets you sleep, an office where you can concentrate, a hotel room that keeps the restaurant downstairs at a respectable distance and a home where a private conversation remains private all depend on acoustics. As India observes Indian Architects’ Day on 1 September, the conversation is beginning to move beyond how spaces look towards how they sound and feel. With AUDAL entering India as a specialist acoustic brand, Shruti Shah believes acoustics needs to move from being a corrective measure after construction to an essential part of architectural design from the very beginning. In this conversation, she explains why luxury spaces can be surprisingly hostile to good acoustics, how open plans and expansive glazing are changing the brief, and why mastering sound may be one of the most overlooked ways to make a space genuinely luxurious. Outlook Luxe had an in depth conversation with Shruti Shah, Director, TIKIDAN about the changing role of acoustics in architecture, the challenges facing contemporary Indian spaces and why sound deserves a seat at the design table from the very beginning.
As India observes Indian Architects’ Day on 1 September, why do you believe acoustics deserves a more prominent place in the conversation around contemporary architecture and interior design?
Shruti Shah: Architecture shapes how a space feels, not just how it looks, and sound is one of its most overlooked elements. A bedroom’s quiet, a home’s privacy, an office’s focus, a hotel’s ambience: all of it is acoustics at work. This day feels like the right moment to bring architects and acoustic consultants into one conversation, treating acoustic comfort as a fundamental part of good design, alongside light, material and layout.
Why has acoustic comfort traditionally remained secondary to visual considerations, particularly in premium residential and commercial projects?
SS: Visual elements are immediate; you can see and approve them on a drawing. Sound is only experienced once a space is occupied, so shortcomings surface after handover, when options to fix them have narrowed. Acoustics has also long been treated as a corrective issue rather than a design one, often because no acoustic consultant was in the room at all. Premium finishes like glass and stone often reflect sound more than they absorb it, working against the very comfort they’re meant to signal.
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How can the acoustic quality of a space influence privacy, concentration, productivity, rest and the overall emotional experience of its occupants?
SS: All of these are connected. Privacy is acoustic containment, knowing your conversation stays yours. Concentration and productivity depend on a mind not working overtime to filter out noise. Rest is the most serious: the World Health Organization links poor acoustic environments to disrupted sleep, chronic stress and cardiovascular risk. And emotionally, a space that holds silence well simply feels calmer, safer and more considered. Good acoustic design lets people experience a space exactly as it was intended.
What are the most common acoustic challenges emerging in contemporary Indian homes, offices, hospitality spaces and commercial environments?
SS: In homes, it’s sound crossing floors and shared walls, along with traffic noise entering through expansive glazing. In offices, it’s speech carrying through open plans and adjoining meeting rooms. In hospitality, it’s room to room privacy and noise from restaurants or bars below guest floors. In commercial spaces, it’s containment, keeping a gym or nightclub from disturbing its neighbours. The challenge is rarely eliminating sound entirely; it’s managing transmission and reverberation appropriately for each space’s purpose.
At what stage of the architectural design process should acoustic planning begin?
SS: Acoustic planning should begin at design development, alongside structure, layout and services, because performance depends on how these elements meet. Once construction is complete, fixing sound transmission becomes considerably more disruptive and expensive, often limited to surface treatments that manage echo but not the structural transmission causing real complaints. Treating insulation as corrective rather than fundamental narrows your options exactly when you need them most, and can compromise both the design intent and the client’s trust.
When designing for sound, what should architects and interior designers consider beyond simply choosing an acoustic insulation material?
SS: The material is the smaller half of the decision. What matters more is the junction: how a floor meets a wall, how a partition meets a ceiling, where a service pipe interrupts an otherwise insulated slab, because sound finds the weakest connection long before it travels through the material itself. Designers should also identify which type of noise they are solving for, and coordinate sequencing on site, since acoustic continuity is easy to break between trades.
How do building systems, spatial detailing, construction practices and installation affect final acoustic performance, and where does the industry most often compromise?
SS: Performance depends on how every component meets the next; a single unsealed gap or badly detailed junction can undo a correct specification. The most common compromise happens late, during value engineering, when acoustic detailing gets quietly reduced because it’s invisible on a walkthrough. This is why architects, acoustic consultants , installers and material manufacturers should meet and coordinatetogether must coordinate early, rather than treating acoustics as one trade’s responsibility, or nobody’s.
With contemporary luxury spaces increasingly featuring open floor plans, expansive glazing, hard surfaces, integrated entertainment systems and connected technology, how is the acoustic design brief changing?
SS: Luxury today means comfort and experience as much as visual expression, yet nearly every feature that signals it, open plans, glazing, hard surfaces, works against acoustic comfort by default. Integrated entertainment and smart systems raise the bar further, demanding genuine isolation to perform as intended. The brief is shifting from specifying insulation in a wall to engineering the whole envelope, which is what acoustic consultants are trained and qualified to solved.
AUDAL was launched in Europe as a standalone specialist brand focused specifically on acoustics. What is the philosophy behind this approach, and how does it translate to India?
SS: ‘Mastering Acoustics’ is deliberate. The discipline sits at the intersection of physics, materials, detailing and human perception, and getting it right takes real expertise, not a single good product, which is exactly why acoustic consultants exist as a profession. That positioning grew from Danosa’s four decades of specialised experience in acoustic insulation. India’s opportunity is larger still: as our cities build denser and taller, acoustic insulation simply hasn’t had a dedicated partner, or a strong base of acoustic consultants, here yet.
As AUDAL enters India on 1 September, what shift would you like to see in how the industry thinks about sound, and what could better acoustic design add to luxury living?
SS: I would like architects, interior designers and acoustic consultants alike to move acoustics from afterthought to opening conversation, so clients ask not only how a space looks, but how it will sound and feel to live in. In luxury living, that shift becomes something genuinely valuable: privacy, calm and control over one’s own environment, on demand. Mastering acoustics ultimately means bringing the right acoustic consultant in early enough that every sensory element of a home works together, not against, the experience it was designed to offer.
