Acousticstudy On Open-plan Research Office In University

As a type of office,open-plan offices have been gradually replacing the private offices(or called “closed offices”)for its tangible economic benefits such as ease of re-configuration and lower construction cost.And now,it has been the main type of modern office.However,the compensation of higher net usable area and occupant density is lower indoor environment quality,for instance,task performance decrement,loss of privacy etc.This issue has aroused wide concern,and many researchers have been studying on this.The definition of “open-plan office” in ISO 3382-3 is given as “offices and similar spaces in which a large number of people can work,have a conversation,or concentrate independently inwell-defined work stations”.According to this description,alarge number of today’s research rooms(or called “study room”)in colleges and universities,which are designed and built for a group og people to do their daily research work,fall within this definition and can be defined as a type of open-plan offices.according to the authors’ best knowledge,there is no published work on the analysis of the impacts of IEQ factors on university open-plan research office(UORO).In this paper,we investigate the satisfaction with environment factors and office productivity in UOROs in 23 universities in china.The results show that the office layout,air quality,light environment,thermal environment and acoustic environment are closely related to the office productivity.The satisfaction with acoustic environment mainly depends on the indoor quietness and the clarity of conversation.The authoralso takes five typical UORO as the main objects,and carries out a comprehensive measurement and evaluation of the UORO’s acoustic environment quality based on the current ISO Standard.The association between the acoustic environment quality and multiple acoustic parameters has also been discussed in this paper,and the general evaluation process and matters needing attention of open-plan office have been summed up.Based on the subjective evaluation of indoor environment and objective test research,the author has reformed alaboratory in Huaqiao University,the values of the laboratory correspond to an office room with very high room absorption.A series of subjective and objective experiments have been carried out to study the impact of speech to task performance.we find that the impact of speech intelligibility generally depends on the type of task,as well as the association of acoustic quality and personal fatigue.