Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer
FrancoAngeli Journals

Scientific papers

Vol. 48 No. 1 (2024)

ISO 22955:2021 acoustic standard and voluntary WELL protocol for open plan offices: verification of acoustic design criteria

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3280/ria1-2024oa17366
Submitted
febbraio 27, 2024
Published
2024-07-22

Abstract

Acoustic comfort in workplaces such as offices ensures the well-being of workers, improving concentration and productivity. Recent standards such as ISO 22955:2021 and voluntary protocols such as the WELL certification (WELL V2 - Sound) offer guidelines for achieving acoustic comfort through proper room design. Challenges arise especially in environments with architectural constraints during renovation work. Preliminary analysis involves room configuration based on standards, literature, and ultimately, from in situ case studies of existing open-plan offices. The rooms considered are free of furniture, and acoustic treatment is limited to suspended ceilings by ISO 22955:2021. Parameters include assessment of the Lombard effect and the involuntary increase in speaker speech effort in the presence of high ambient noise to ensure acoustic comfort in open plan offices. The study analyzes the synergy between normative standards (ISO) and voluntary protocols (WELL) to identify compatibility when applying both documents.

 

References (including DOI)

  1. WELL Building Standard V2, Q4 2020, International WELL Build-ing Institute, 2020.
  2. ISO 22955:2021, Acoustics – Acoustic quality of open office spaces.
  3. AS/NZS 2107:2016, Acoustics - Recommended design sound levels and reverberation times for building interiors.
  4. NF, S. S 31-199-Acoustique-Performances acoustiques des espaces ouverts de bureaux. AFNOR-Association Française de Normalisation, 2016.
  5. Cabrera, D., Yadav, M., & Protheroe, D. (2018). Critical meth-odological assessment of the distraction distance used for evaluating room acoustic quality of open-plan offices. Applied Acoustics, 140, 132-142. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-460X(81)80020-X.
  6. Selzer, J., & Schelle, F. (2018, May). Practical aspects of meas-uring acoustics in German open plan offices. In 11th European Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering (Euro-noise), Crete (pp. 27-31).
  7. Yadav, M., Cabrera, D., Love, J., Kim, J., Holmes, J., Caldwell, H., & de Dear, R. (2019). Reliability and repeatability of ISO 3382-3 metrics based on repeated acoustic measurements in open-plan offices. Applied Acoustics, 150, 138-146.
  8. Lüthi, G., & Desarnaulds, V. (2020). Analysis of open plan acoustic parameters based on Swiss and international data-bases of in situ measurements. Proceedings of the ICSV27, Pra-gue, Czech Republik, 12-16.
  9. Kang, S., Mak, C. M., Ou, D., & Zhang, Y. (2022). An investigation of acoustic environments in large and medium-sized open-plan offices in China. Applied Acoustics, 186, 108447
  10. Lombard E., Le signe de l'élévation de la voix, 1911
  11. ISO 12354-6:2003, Building Acoustics – Estimation of acoustic performance of buildings from performance of elements - Sound absorption in enclosed spaces
  12. De Croon, E., Sluiter, J., Kuijer, P. P., & Frings-Dresen, M. (2005). The effect of office concepts on worker health and performance: a systematic review of the literature. Ergono-mics, 48(2), 119-134.
  13. Spagnolo, R. (Ed.). (2001). Manuale di acustica applicata. UTET libreria.
  14. Choi, Y. J. (2023). Towards better acoustic conditions in school buildings in Korea-a need for Korean standard for classroom acoustics. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea, 42(2), 113-123.
  15. LEED v4 for Building Design and Construction, 2016
  16. Hongisto, V., & Keränen, J. (2018). Open-plan offices-New Finn-ish room acoustic regulations. Proceedings of EuroNoise2018.
  17. Rindel, J. H., & Christensen, C. L. (2012, May). Acoustical simula-tion of open-plan offices according to ISO 3382-3. In Proceed-ings of the Euronoise (pp. 10-13).
  18. ISO 3382-3:2022, Acoustics – Measurement of room acoustic parameters – Part 3: Open plan offices
  19. ASTM E1374, Standard Guide for Open Office Acoustics and Applicable ASTM Standards
  20. Yadav, M., Kim, J., Cabrera, D., & De Dear, R. (2017). Auditory distraction in open-plan office environments: The effect of multi-talker acoustics. Applied Acoustics, 126, 68-80.
  21. Zaglauer, M., Drotleff, H., & Liebl, A. (2017). Background babble in open-plan offices: A natural masker of disruptive speech?. Applied Acoustics, 118, 1-7.
  22. Utami, S. S., Arifianto, D., & Nadiroh, A. (2017). Study on the effect of partition heights in open plan office to the privacy and distraction level utilizing computational fluid dynamics. Procedia engineering, 170, 195-201.
  23. Larrieu, F., & Harvie-Clark, J. (2017, July). Contrasting open plan office design implications from emerging French, German and Finnish standards. In INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON SOUND AND VIBRATION (Vol. 24).
  24. Iannace, G., Ciaburro, G., & Trematerra, A. (2018). Heating, ven-tilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) noise detection in open-plan offices using recursive partitioning. Buildings, 8(12), 169.
  25. Delle Macchie, S., Secchi, S., & Cellai, G. (2018). Acoustic issues in open plan offices: A typological analysis. Buildings, 8(11), 161.
  26. D’Orazio, D., Rossi, E., & Garai, M. (2018). Comparison of differ-ent in situ measurements techniques of intelligibility in an open-plan office. Building Acoustics, 25(2), 111-122.
  27. Dickschen, A., Bertazzoni, R., & Liebl, A. (2018, May). Evaluating room acoustic quality in open-plan offices by adding the distri-bution of possible source and receiver positions to the simula-tion. In Proceedings of Euronoise (pp. 27-31).
  28. Petersen, C. M., & Rasmussen, B. (2018). Acoustic design of open-plan offices and comparison of requirements in the Nor-dic countries. In Baltic-Nordic Acoustics Meeting 2018 (pp. 1-8). Nordic Acoustic Association.
  29. Kemppainen, J., Niemi, H., Kylliäinen, M., & Mikkilä, A. The cost effects of acoustics in open-plan office. In Proceedings of the Joint Baltic-Nordic Acoustics Meeting. Reykjavik (pp. 15-18).
  30. Barros, M. N., Raeder, A., & Borin, M. (2018). A comparison study between prediction models and in situ measurements of acoustic clouds in open plan offices. Euronoise.
  31. CAMARGO, D. (2018). Development and application of ques-tionnaires to assess acoustic environment in open plan offices. EURONOISE, Grécia.
  32. Wenmaekers, R., & van Hout, N. (2019). How ISO 3382-3 acous-tic parameter values are affected by furniture, barriers and sound absorption in a typical open plan office. Universitätsbib-liothek der RWTH Aachen.
  33. Harvie-Clark, J., Larrieu, F., & Opsanger, C. (2019). Iso 3382-3: Necessary but not sufficient. a new approach to acoustic design for activity-based-working offices. Universitätsbibliothek der RWTH Aachen.
  34. Lee, P. J., Park, S. H., & Lee, B. K. (2019, January). Impact of acoustic enviornment on work in open-plan offices across job characteristics. In Proceedings of the 26th International Con-gress on Sound and Vibration, ICSV 2019.
  35. Braat-Eggen, E., Reinten, J., Hornikx, M., & Kohlrausch, A. (2020). The influence of background speech on a writing task in an open-plan study environment. Building and Environment, 169, 106586.
  36. Lou, H., & Ou, D. (2020). The effects of speech intelligibility on English scientific literature reading in Chinese open-plan offic-es. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 147(1), EL1-EL6.
  37. Keränen, J., Hakala, J., & Hongisto, V. (2020). Effect of sound absorption and screen height on spatial decay of speech–Experimental study in an open-plan office. Applied Acoustics, 166, 107340.
  38. Hongisto, V., Keränen, J., Labia, L., & Alakoivu, R. (2021). Preci-sion of ISO 3382-2 and ISO 3382-3–A Round-Robin test in an open-plan office. Applied Acoustics, 175, 107846.
  39. Lenne, L., Chevret, P., & Parizet, É. (2021). Measurement un-certainty and unicity of single number quantities describing the spatial decay of speech level in open-plan offices. Applied Acoustics, 182, 108269.
  40. Teixeira, T., Prata, A., Mcdade, A., Martins, F., & Inacio, O. (2020, December). An experimental, numerical and subjective approach for open plan office acoustics. In Forum Acusticum (pp. 2721-2725).
  41. Harvie-Clark, J., & Hinton, R. (2021, June). The value of control for acoustic satisfaction in open plan offices: a case study. In The 13th ICBEN Congress on Noise as a Public Health Problem, Sweden.
  42. Madzharova, Z., Kirechev, A., & Antovska, M. (2020, Decem-ber). Influence of acoustic environment upon work perfor-mance in open plan offices. In Forum Acusticum (pp. 2225-2231).
  43. Kang, S., Mak, C. M., Ou, D., & Zhang, Y. (2022). The effect of room acoustic quality levels on work performance and percep-tions in open-plan offices: A laboratory study. Applied Acous-tics, 201, 109096.
  44. Jo, H. I., Santika, B. B., Lee, H., & Jeon, J. Y. (2022). Classification of sound environment based on subjective response with speech privacy in open plan offices. Applied Acoustics, 189, 108595.
  45. D. D’Orazio, L. Parati, Lo scenario di sviluppo della UNI 11532-3 (parte 2), Ferrara, AIA 2023.

Metrics

Metrics Loading ...