Acoustic Design of Voice Booths in Open Plan Offices by Modal Analysis

In the past years, due to the popularity of open plan offices the need for enclosed spaces meant for concentration moments, small meetings of two people or even for phone meetings is increasing. In order to provide adequate rooms to these types of activities, voice booths are been implemented on office spaces. However, these booths are normally very small with volumes under 15 cubic meters. In Brazil, it has been noticed an increase in the usage of voice booths in open plan offices. However, voice booths demand a great quality of the sound, especially when it comes to the intelligibility of the human voice. Still they have an acoustic field remarkably different and unknown compared with normal meeting rooms, which hinders the acoustic design since acousticians do not have enough parameters to design these rooms. Therefore, this paper investigates the sound behavior of booths by studying the modes distribution and the coloration present in a considerable amount of existing rooms in order to determine parameters to guide the acoustic design of these spaces.