Contributions to acoustical comfort in the built environment, 1956–2015

When the senior author joined Paul S. Veneklasen & Associates in 1956, research was under way on speech intelligibility relative to background noise, not in buildings but in spacecraft! Back on earth, additional studies countered the then-popular idea that gypsum board construction was low quality with poor sound isolation, leading to the development of multi-layer gypsum board wall designs for office buildings and studios. Further investigations predicted speech intelligibility based on design features and led to development of prototype masking noise systems. A set of acoustical design elements (such as tall furniture barriers, sound-absorptive barriers and ceilings, and orienting workstations to maximize distance) emerged naturally from these studies. Within the last couple of decades, however, open-plan office design has evolved away from traditional design, incorporating fewer of these design elements. This provides opportunity to evaluate the efficacy of standard design elements in modern collaborat...