Open-Plan Office Acoustics: Experimental Study with Acoustic Screens

The open-plan office concept emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to improve communication between coworkers, reduce costs due to space optimization, and facilitate the supervision of administrative and operational staff. However, in open-plan offices, tasks requiring different levels of privacy and concentration are carried out simultaneously, which characterizes the acoustic design's complexity level. The basic concepts and issues influencing the acoustic quality in offices are described throughout the “Introduction” section to contextualize the subject. This study assesses the efficiency of acoustic screens in an open-plan office through field measurements. An experimental study was carried out, evaluating the influence of these screens using parameters and descriptors of acoustic quality in open-plan offices. The measurements included scenarios with and without desk-mounted and floor-mounted screens and complied with field measurements. Although the limited acoustic treatment of the room affected the effectiveness of the screens—not achieving the ideal acoustic quality—the screens positively influenced the room's acoustic quality compared to a configuration of the room without screens. The results indicated that the screens increased the spatial decay rate of speech D2,S from 1.43 to 2.48 dB and reduced the reverberation time T from 1.7 to 0.9 s. In addition, it was observed that the screens created acoustic shadow zones due to sound diffraction effects. This research contributes by providing a quantitative analysis of the effects of desk and floor screens on the acoustics of a real open-plan office through experimental testing.