Acoustics
Sound in built environments: levels, reverberation, transmission, speech intelligibility and privacy. Workplace acoustics centres on a specific problem — intelligible speech as the dominant disruptor of knowledge work — and its measurement, prediction and control.
Acoustic dissatisfaction is the most consistent complaint in open workplace research, and its cognitive mechanism is well established: intelligible irrelevant speech disrupts verbal working memory. Acoustics is where the focus-provision evidence chain becomes physics — speech privacy classes, absorption strategies, sound masking — and where value engineering does its most measurable damage.
- What acoustic performance does each setting class require, in measurable terms?
- Why is speech privacy, not sound level, the critical metric for focus settings?
- Which treatments actually deliver which acoustic outcomes?
- How is acoustic performance verified at handover?
- Room acoustics standards (ISO 3382-3 for open plan, speech privacy metrics)
- The irrelevant-speech-effect literature
- Field measurement and commissioning data
- Post-occupancy acoustic satisfaction research
Setting requirement profiles carrying acoustic classes with verification methods; the absorb-block-cover toolkit applied per setting purpose; enclosure specified for speech privacy where focus and confidentiality demand it; acoustic commissioning at handover as contractual verification.
Kit of Parts
The definition of the complete workplace setting system — every setting type, its purpose, quantity, requirements and behavioural logic — from focus and team settings to hospitality, wellbeing and specialist environments.
Architectural Guidance
The translation of the concept and kit into design-governing guidance: spatial, environmental, acoustic, lighting, thermal, biophilic, accessibility, technology and identity requirements the design team must satisfy.
Targeted Insights
Focused mixed-method investigations that explain specific contradictions the broad evidence has surfaced but cannot resolve.
Post-Occupancy Evaluation
The structured test of whether the delivered workplace performs as the strategy claimed — measured against the baselines, criteria and accepted sacrifices recorded before it was built.
Treating acoustics as a finishes problem — carpet and ceiling tiles — while ignoring speech transmission paths, or specifying 'quiet zones' with no acoustic specification at all. The avoided quiet floor is the discipline's recurring monument to unspecified intentions.
Sound masking effectiveness across contexts, and the acoustics of hybrid work (video-call sound as the new dominant disruptor) are the live edges of the field.