As open environments and flexible seating become more popular in offices, good acoustic design becomes more important to facilitate collaborative working while reducing distraction and noise build-up from across the office space. This is reflected in the new BCO Guide to Fit Out 2025 where designers are encouraged to follow the prevailing guidance on room acoustics for open-plan workspaces.
With our new room acoustic modelling capabilities, not only can we model the acoustics of a space, allowing us to craft a bespoke solution that achieves our clients’ aspirations, but we can enable our clients to experience the acoustics of the space as if they were standing within the room!
As we settle in to our new office, we thought this was a perfect opportunity to apply our room acoustic capabilities to assess the quality of our own office spaces, crafting a solution that facilitates good speech intelligibility in localised areas while reducing the impact of distractive sounds. We specifically looked at our open plan offices and break out space where company presentations are given over a healthy serving of beer and pizza.
This started with a complete room acoustic survey of the office, conducting measurements to calculate key room acoustic metrics such as reverberation time, the decay rate of speech, and sound pressure level of speech at various distances, among others. This information was used to obtain a full understanding of how the office functioned acoustically and determine where improvements could be made to enable the office to be better fit for purpose.
The next step was to create a three-dimensional model of the office, fine-tuning the geometry and material selection so that the measurements of the real office aligned with the predictive results in the model. Potential solutions could then be added into the virtual space and their impact on the acoustic environment evaluated. The software even allows us to hear speech and background chatter as if we were standing within the model!
The photo below shows the difference in speech intelligibility across our break-out space during a presentation with and without our vertical baffle solution. This was a great tool for determining the effectiveness of absorptive finishes to ensure everyone in the room can get the most out of a presentation.
From marketing agencies to law firms to call centres, open plan offices can host a variety of different types of collaborative and concentrative work. At Scotch, we believe that good room acoustics should promote the intended function of the space enabling a comfortable work environment for occupants. Utilising modelling tools, we can better craft solutions that accomplish this.
Nick Brown
Acoustic Consultant
nick.brown@scotchpartners.com