Abstract:
Traffic noise pollution in Bangkok is becoming more and more severe due to the inability to control a number of cars on the road as well as the physical activity of the street responding to the direct noise perception. Currently, there was only measure to control the noise volume from cars that was not effective to solve this problem. The overall areas in the city and urban planning measures were important roles to solve the problem, but there was still no measure effective enough to resolve. Therefore, the researchs objective was to study the relationship between the nature of traffic noise pollution in Bangkok and the physical elements of streetscape to be presented as urban design guideline for traffic noise pollution problems by examining the noise volume in the road-side areas of different physical elements of streetscape. These included building, void of the buildings, open space and street furniture to create the condition for urban design guidelines , its setback and proportion as well as the physical elements of streetscape that could reduce noise. The results of this study was found that the urban physical elements reduced the noise pollution differently that can be divided into two types of areas: road-side areas that can reduce traffic noise directly and building façade areas that can reflect noise from its physical elements of streetscape. To design the building and its proportion suitably consisted of (1) bush: it reduced the noise volume in both road-side areas and building façade areas, (2) street furniture: they were located in the road-side areas that could reduce noise, (3) areas with the variety of the components or uneven vertical plane such as void of the buildings for store that could reduce noise and (4) building design: concave and convex of the building that were not in the vertical plan in front of the building could reflect noise from above in front area of the building. Moreover, the factors of the proportion of the physical elements of streetscape were important for noise reduction more than setback factor. In care of effective noise pollution reduction, the design must concern about the proportion of the physical fundamentals as well as the distance of road-side areas and building façade areas.