The tilted windows on the ground floor, though covered with dark, heavy curtains, let in excited chatter and loud laughter from students heading to their morning classes. It doesn’t last long – just a dozen minutes, during which the most frequently used buses release the bubbly masses of students onto the street – but enough for you to come to your senses and realise that Monday has arrived together with them. As you scramble out of bed into the crowded streets of Bouwkunde, the cacophony of sounds draws you into the building's atmosphere. Mixed and overlapped, creating the background of our life at the Faculty - with you as its audience, its performer and its composer. 

As a byproduct of our industrial society, noise is all around us, but we aren't always aware of the negative effects it can have on people's physical and mental health. Adhering to a few fundamental principles, such as respect for voice and words, sonic awareness, and the deliberate use of hearing, is necessary to create an acoustically healthy environment that enables us to thrive among the sounds of life. To preserve the chimes that tend to fade out, while remaining open to the uproar that springs out of each technological stride. To build an aural idiom that interprets its own symbolism. To accept the silence, enforcing it in the due moments. And, above all else, to listen.