Acoustic Characteristics of Open-plan Offices in Developing China

摘要

With the rapid development of China, a considerable number of open-plan offices are being constructed. The study of acoustic characteristics in open-plan offices is of great significance from both comfort and working efficiency viewpoints, and the consideration under Chinese language environment is also important. In this research, measurements were made in four open-plan offices in Beijing, along with a series of questionnaires surveys. The results show that, acoustic quality is the second important factor for such office environment, just after lighting, and there is a certain degree of requirement for speech privacy. Although subjective evaluation of the acoustic environment depends on the type of work, it is generally between "neither good nor bad" and "bad". The subjective evaluation significantly correlates to L_(Aeq) and L_(10), so that using reverberation time only is not appropriate to evaluate the acoustic environment. Speech-related sources are the major noise sources, and reducing speech transmission index, STI, markedly improves speech privacy as well as the quality of the overall acoustic environment.