Speaker
Description
Open-plan offices frequently struggle to balance speech privacy and speech intelligibility, which can degrade productivity and occupant well-being. This study investigates how acoustic conditions in an open-plan office can be improved using adaptive acoustic elements, including mobile partitions and height-adjustable island-type ceiling panels, both manually and robotically operated. These elements can be reconfigured to support different activity types such as collaboration, communication and focused work. Room acoustic measurements and simulations were performed to evaluate performance against ISO 22955:2021 - Acoustic quality of open office spaces. Activity types were represented through 21 different layout configurations with multiple acoustic element set-ups and combinations. Acoustic performance was assessed using key acoustic parameters related to speech like DA,S, D2,S, Lp,A,S,4m and reverberation time. The results show that changing the position, height and configuration of acoustic elements has a measurable impact on these parameters. Some configurations achieved higher speech attenuation values and lower reverberation times, while others produced different balances between spatial decay and reverberant conditions. The findings also highlight the influence of ceiling height on the effectiveness of partitions. These results provide different insights for designing activity-based acoustic environments that can dynamically respond to changing office use.