We experience a room with all our senses. So shouldn’t architects spend as much time on how a space sounds as they do on how it looks? Office acoustics are the second most important physical feature affecting workplace productivity (after light). As we shift towards a ‘knowledge economy’ where success depends increasingly on human productivity and satisfaction, office noise is becoming a pressing issue for businesses.
Acoustics have become particularly problematic in the open offices that many companies now use. As Søren Peter Lund, a senior researcher at the Danish National Research Centre for the Working Environment explains:
"The lack of privacy in an open office makes workers feel like they are constantly being watched, and the noises around them might be perceived as a threat and an intrusion. Especially when people are talking around you it becomes very difficult to concentrate. The acoustic quality of a room is one of the main factors to take into account when designing spaces that are used for both communicative and cognitive tasks".
