CASE STUDY
Open Work Spaces
Spaces where we work and interact
CHALLENGE
What are the challenges and demands in open work spaces?
Modern workplace design enhances well-being – and thus the success of companies. It places people at the center and focuses on hybrid and inclusive environments that not only support health but also inspire and promote employees.
Key elements such as acoustics and ergonomics are crucial for creating attractive, functional, and sustainable offices where people enjoy working and that provide added value compared to working from home.
The noise environment is a crucial factor influencing stress, health, and performance, and neglecting it can cost companies a lot of money.
Discover the potential of your office with the monetization calculator from the Fraunhofer Office Initiative:
Since 2018, there has been a stringent occupational safety regulation with the ASR A3.7 "Lärm" (german occupational health and safety guideline for noise), and since 2021, the ISO 22955 provides a new and specific guide for acoustic quality in open office landscapes.
With various teams, different activities, and directly connected social areas, the demand is particularly high to create a productive work environment.
Reducing reverberation time in these spaces is usually a complex task. It primarily leads to an improvement in speech intelligibility. This is problematic because the informational content of others' speech poses the greatest disturbance potential.
The goal is mainly to reduce sound propagation so that accidentally overheard conversations cannot be easily understood.
SOLUTION
How do we address these challenges at audics?
To design future-proof and sustainable workplaces, various options for retreat spaces and a well-coordinated acoustics need to be integrated into the room. By incorporating effective sound barriers and partitions, large areas can be divided into team-friendly zones, reducing disturbances from conversations and creating a place of privacy.
These measures need to match the aesthetics and should therefore be considered as early as possible.
MEHRWERT
What is the added value for you?
To effectively implement acoustic measures, integrate them aesthetically into the atmosphere, and make them part of the design, we assess from the very first planning step how you can acoustically optimize your floor plan.
Through wave-based acoustic simulation, we can precisely account for diffraction over acoustically effective furniture, allowing us to make accurate statements about the required material quantities and dimensions.
Detailed auralizations of complex scenes and soundscapes make acoustics a part of important design decisions.
SOCIAL
How do you get an idea of the acoustic impact your workplace design will have on the daily office environment?
Discover in our interactive 3D model not only how sound propagation visually manifests but also experience the situation through our 360° auralization: Develop with our assistance a design that acoustically fits your company.
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Here you can see three simple variations of an open-plan office for illustration:
VARIANT A
Acoustically untreated
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High disturbance potential due to high volume
VARIANT B
Highly absorbing ceiling
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High disturbance potential due to high speech intelligibility
VARIANT C
Screens and partitions
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Controlled acoustic environment