Document Type
Conference Item
Publication Date
9-1-2013
Abstract
Open-plan office has become the most popular type of office layout. Organizations were inclined to employ open-plan office layout for its economic, flexibility and ideological reasons. Green building tends to utilize this concept of office layout for its ability to assist in maximization of daylight usage and natural ventilation. However reduced barriers in open-plan office resulted in poor acoustical performance. Thus, the objective of this study is to investigate and evaluate the level of acoustical performance of open-plan offices in green buildings in Malaysia. Investigation were limited to selected assessment parameters of background noise (BN) level, noise criteria (NC), reverberation time (RT) and speech transmission index (ST!). The BN levels for all measured open-plan offices were found to be acceptable around 35 dB(A) while the NC ratings found the spaces to be somewhat quiet. RTs were varied from satisfactory 0.7s to an unacceptable 1.5s. STIs were found to be ample within good and fair speech intelligibility. However. it still provides equally ample speech distraction towards the occupants of the spaces.
Keywords
Acoustics, Green Building, Open-plan office
Divisions
BuiltEnvironment
Event Title
Inter Noise 2013
Event Location
Innsbruck, Austria
Event Dates
15-18 Sep 2013
Event Type
conference