Modern open-plan offices include both collective workspaces and more intimate, private areas such as meeting rooms and refreshment areas. For this reason, it is important to provide greater compositional flexibility and ensure that the rooms are acoustically comfortable and suitable for the activities carried out within.
The acoustic treatment proposed is for an open-plan office over 300 m³ in size, divided and arranged into several areas: an operational area with individual workstations, a meeting room and a refreshment area. At the planning and design stage, the Reverberation Time (Rt) of each room was determined and then the optimum values achievable based on respective use were identified.
In shared workspaces, the absence of walls or partitions can contribute to an increase in reverberation times and, therefore, background noise. In this area approximately 160 m³ in size, the installation of 10 Silente sound-absorbing ceiling panels (size 120x120x5cm), 4 Scriba sound-absorbing desk panels (size 160x50x5cm), 2 D-Space acoustic floor partition panels (size 160x120x5cm) and 2 Silente sound-absorbing wall panels (size 180x120x5cm) was proposed to reduce the sound level by 4.57 dB, from an average Rt of 1.74 s to 0.61 s (frequencies 250-2000 Hz).
Similarly, installing 3 suspended Silente sound-absorbing panels 120x120x5 in size in the approximately 45 m³ meeting room made it possible to reduce the sound level by 3.94, bringing the reverberation time down from 2.09 s to 0.85 s.
On the other hand, in the refreshment area around 100 m³ in size, a combination of suspended and floor-standing solutions was the ideal solution to maximise results. With the installation of 3 suspended Silente panels measuring 180x120x5, positioned 30 cm from the ceiling, and 2 sound-absorbing Menhir totems measuring 40x200x40, the average Rt decreased from 1.39 s to 0.64 s.
Caruso Acoustic sound-absorbing products are particularly effective in improving the acoustic comfort of work environments such as offices, co-working spaces, meeting rooms, break out areas, and thanks to the multiple customisation possibilities they can meet any particular design requirements.