The acoustical design of conventional open plan offices

This paper uses a previously developed model of sound propagation in conventional open plan offices to explore the influence of each parameter of the office design on the expected speech privacy in the office. The ceiling absorption, the height of partial height panels and the workstation plan size are shown to be most important. However, it is not possible to achieve 'acceptable' speech privacy if all design parameters do not have near to optimum values. A successful open office should also include an optimum masking sound spectrum and an office etiquette that encourages talking at lower voice levels.