Creative solutions to give noisy Hong Kong a rare slice of silence

Cities, workplaces, stores and homes are meticulously planned in terms of their construction, efficiency and cost, but little thought goes into how they sound.

The neon lights and bustle of Nathan Road might excite tourists, but the onslaught on the ears from busy traffic, blaring horns, pneumatic drills and general street noise takes its toll. We have urban planners, but where are the urban sound planners?

"You have no ear-lids - you can't block out sound," says Julian Treasure, chairman of The Sound Agency and creator of soothing soundscapes for retailers, offices and airports across the globe.

"Why do we end up sitting in restaurants where we have to shout from a foot away to make ourselves heard by our dinner companion, or in planes where someone talks through an old-fashioned telephone handset on a cheap stereo system, making us jump out of our skins? We're designing environments that make us crazy."

He singles out hospitals, where noise levels - menacing-sounding beeping machinery, humming computers and general din - have doubled in the past 40 years, Treasure claims. It affects patients, whose sleep is degraded, delaying recovery, and staff, who cannot concentrate, so are prone to making errors.

"Sound affects us psychologically, cognitively and behaviourally, even though we're not aware of it," says Treasure, who thinks it is time cities were designed for our ears, not just our eyes in what he calls "invisible architecture".