Indoor soundscape study for the investigation of acoustic comfort in shopping center: A case study of Eskişehir Espark Shopping Center

In shopping centers; lighting, climate, vegetation, water elements, pedestrian-vehicle axles, assembly units, sales units, indoor and outdoor entertainment units and food and beverage units come together to fulfill all commercial demands such as: shopping, having fun, eating, drinking and working. The resulting intensity has brought difficulties in managing comfort requirements such as acoustic comfort, thermal comfort, lighting, indoor air quality and natural ventilation, which should be provided at the optimum level so that users can spend a comfortable time in the building. In recent years, "soundscape" approach has come to the forefront of studies aimed to determine and provide acoustic comfort level according to comfort requirements. Soundscape; can be defined as independent determination of the sound environment resulting from environmental interaction with sound sources, independent of positive and negative ideas. With this approach; the effect of the sounds created by the perceived sound environment independent from noise on the space users is separated by subjective / objective methods. However, although there are standardization studies for these subjective / objective methods, the standard regarding the satisfaction values to be achieved has not been established yet. In this context, the method produced for urban soundscape studies was evaluated with the indoor soundscape study on Espark AVM, one of the shopping center buildings that has similarities with the city in terms of spatial fiction, in order to examine its usability in indoor spaces. Within the scope of the study, soundmarks, "soundmarks / sound environment" satisfaction and sound environment quality were determined with field surveys for obtaining subjective data. In order to obtain objective data, sound walk and sound level measurements at fixed points, acquisition of binaural sound recordings, calculation of metric analysis of sound recordings, use of the listed equations for each adjective pair with metric explanatory steps were applied. As a result, it has been confirmed that the method produced in the main source is generally usable with the analysis of the total data in the study areas proposed within the scope of the main source, but it cannot be used in the analysis of the study areas separately. Keywords: Shopping centers, Indoor soundscape, Soundmarks, Sound environment quality, Sound environment satisfaction