Combined noise, concentration and speech privacy
The flexibility required by today’s businesses means most working environments have a combination of both issues – noise and concentration and speech privacy.
Contemporary work environments that make use of both closed and open plan spaces are cost effective and can help build good working relationships, but they do not always promote a successful acoustic environment. Typically a busy open office may be located in close proximity to quiet cellular offices or confidential meeting rooms, and noise travelling from one area to the other can prove extremely distracting for people occupying the space.
Noise affecting mixed use working environments
These agile working environments require careful design of their acoustic landscape to allow them to work together effectively.
Noise and concentration
This issue most commonly affects open-plan working areas.
This layout offers ways of working that enhance creativity, improve communication and boost team building. However, max-packed buildings with hard reflective interiors, continually reverberate sounds and staff suffer from an increase in background noise. A lack of walls and cubicles and uncarpeted floors further promote excessively high noise levels.
Noise affecting open plan areas
Because of this, designers, engineers and architects believe that quiet is good, but this is a major misconception. As office devices have got quieter, the measured sound levels in an open plan office are now often too low, and this too can be very unpleasant. Why? Because in very quiet spaces sounds are more noticeable and travel further. You will hear every keyboard stoke and conversation across the office, disturbing all within listening distance and forming a constant distraction.
Combined noise, concentration and speech privacy
The flexibility required by today’s businesses means most working environments have a combination of both issues – noise and concentration and speech privacy.
Contemporary work environments that make use of both closed and open plan spaces are cost effective and can help build good working relationships, but they do not always promote a successful acoustic environment. Typically a busy open office may be located in close proximity to quiet cellular offices or confidential meeting rooms, and noise travelling from one area to the other can prove extremely distracting for people occupying the space.
Noise affecting mixed use working environments
These agile working environments require careful design of their acoustic landscape to allow them to work together effectively.
Reverberation control
Reverberation consists of many reflections of a sound, maintaining the overall sound in a room for a time even after the direct sound has stopped.
Reverberation can cause problems in many types of building, particularly those with large, relatively empty spaces. Restaurants, bars, school halls, foyers, atriums, auditoriums and open-plan offices are all examples of spaces that commonly experience this issue.
Hard, reflective surfaces, such as glass, wood, metal and stone, cause sound to reverberate more. In a room with more acoustically reflective surfaces, it will take longer for the sound to die away, leaving the listener struggling with poor speech clarity.
The reverberant characteristic of a room is defined by the Reverberation Time RT60 which is the time it takes for the sound pressure level Lp (SPL) to decrease by 60 dB.
The optimum reverberation time depends on the size of the room and its activity. For classrooms and offices it can vary between 0.6 seconds and 1.3 seconds and for larger spaces such as concert and event halls it could be over 2 seconds.
In order to obtain the desired reverberation time sound absorbent materials are introduced onto the hard reflective surfaces. Depending on the amount used the reverberation time can be reduced to suit the room size and relevant activity.