Building acoustic regulations in Europe – Brief history and actual situation

Acoustic regulations for housing, educational buildings and some other building categories now exist in most countries in Europe, but findings from comparative studies show that extent and strictness as well as descriptors vary considerably across Europe. The acoustic performance areas dealt with are e.g. airborne and impact sound insulation, reverberation time, traffic noise, service equipment noise. Comparing countries, there is in general no consistency of contents, structure or enforcement of acoustic regulations.
Building acoustic regulations are typically valid for new buildings only, including buildings converted to other uses, but most often not for renovated buildings, if uses are unchanged. Consequently, large parts of the building stock constructed in periods with missing or weak acoustic regulations still suffer from poor acoustic quality, in spite of other qualities being upgraded. In most countries, the first acoustic regulations were for housing, in some countries in the 1950’es or earlier, and the next acoustic regulations were made stepwise for e.g. educational buildings, kindergarten, hospitals etc.
The paper includes examples from comparative studies of the current regulatory acoustic requirements in Europe, thus illustrating the diversity in the actual situation. The examples will include cases from the Nordic countries and encourage more harmonization of acoustic regulations in the Nordic countries as well as in Europe.