Open-office acoustics: History, projects, and standards

Historically, open-plan offices were the realm of clerical workers. In the 1960s upgraded open-office environments were introduced for mid-level office workers. Employees in these early open offices were bothered by noise and poor speech privacy. Starting in 1969, I became involved with finding acoustical solutions. This article explains the acoustical challenges with many of the first open-office projects, looks at the acoustical systems modified, and discusses acoustical standards developed by ASTM Committee E33 concerning open-office acoustics. This is an expanded version of a paper given at InterNoise 2012.