Akoustolith
Open-knowledge reference entry
Akoustolith is a porous ceramic material resembling stone. Akoustolith was a patented product of a collaboration between Rafael Guastavino Jr. (the son of Rafael Guastavino) and Harvard professor Wallace Sabine over years starting in 1911. It was used to limit acoustic reflection and noise in large vaulted ceilings. Akoustolith was bonded as an additional layer to the structural tile of the Tile Arch System ceilings built by the Rafael Guastavino Company of New Jersey. The most prevalent use was to aid speech intelligibility in cathedrals and churches before the widespread use of public address systems.
History
Akoustolith was first introduced by the Guastavino Fireproof Construction Company, in collaboration with Wallace Sabine of Harvard University, in 1915. The founder of the Guastavino Company, Rafael Guastavino Sr., had immigrated to the United States from Spain in 1881, bringing with him the method of timbrel-vault construction, also known as cohesive construction. The Raphael Guastavino Company's vaulting technique created monolithic assemblies by layering thin bricks and structural tiles with fast-drying mortar. The Guastavino Technique, as it came to be known, consisted of multiple layers of plaster and tile in the construction of masonry vaulting; the first course of tile was set in its position with quick setting mortar creating form-work for the subsequent layers.
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This entry incorporates text from “Akoustolith” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.