Why Architects Still Need To Use Their Ears
- paul08129
- Aug 15
- 6 min read
In the post which ran alongside the first full episode of the ‘Investing in Conversation’ podcast:
‘Do You Lead With Listening?’,
I told you I’d first met my guest (sound expert, Julian Treasure) ‘More than ten years ago’, after someone suggested I watch one of his TED talks. I’ve since realized – that was back in 2013!
At that time, he had given three presentations to TED, which I ended up watching back-to-back!: You can find them all at:
‘Why Architects Need to Use their Ears’;
‘Shh! Sound Health in 8 Steps’ and
‘The 4 Ways Sound Affects Us’ –
As I write, there are two more:
‘5 Ways to Listen Better’ and
‘How To Speak So That People Want To Listen’.
You can find them all on YouTube, or at ted.com.
Over the next couple of years, we recorded two shows together. I shared clips from both in the first series of the current podcast– and our 2013 chat (named after the first TED talk I watched) is now available as a bonus pod at:
On the show,, Julian talks about a common conflict between the design and use of buildings and its impact on:
· Business,
· Education and
· Healthcare.
In the context of business, he highlights:
· The impact of noise on productivity and performance,
· the effect on health of ‘chronic exposure’ to 65 decibels (or above) and
· how poor acoustics exacerbate both issues.
Since that was recorded, evidence of the commercial importance of noise, because of its effects on our:
· Cognitive performance,
· Stress-levels,
· Sleep disruption and resulting,
· Levels of Conflict (to name just a few!)
has been growing.
Last year, the World Health Organisation consolidated its guidance on environmental noise across UN bodies. That isn’t specific to offices – but it does reinforce what Julian told me during our very first meeting – and reiterates on the pod:
· Noise poses a risk to human health, even if it isn’t loud enough to cause hearing loss; and
· a risk to human health translates into a risk to the health of our businesses.
In 2024, a review of forty-one studies of open-plan offices looked at factors which affect our experience of a soundscape, even though they’re not directly related to noise or acoustics. They include:
· What the space is used for,
· How it’s arranged and
· What the occupants expect, ,
Through the second half of 1994, I felt all those influences first-hand – every day! – as I tried to be a lawyer in a telesales office! I told the story on Episode 7 of ‘Investing in Conversation:
‘Where Works Best For You?’,
Twenty years later, when Julian and I first worked together, there were signs that the era of ‘one size fits all’ open-plan working might be coming to an end. Although since the pandemic, it’s experiencing something of a revival. I can see why:
Private offices take up more space than open-plan arrangements– and, obviously, More space equals higher financial and environmental cost. If only a small percentage of the team are in the office each day, on the face of it, downsizing (by bringing everyone together in one room) makes perfect economic and ecological sense.
Although it can be a false economy, if, for example, the soundscape creates:
· a general conflict between design and use – the space doesn’t work for anyone; or
· a conflict between users – it works for some, but not others.
Prof. Jeremy Myerson has identified three work modes:
· Collaboration (involving spoken conversation),
· Concentration and
· Contemplation.
In most cases, the second kind of clash happens when someone is trying to concentrate or contemplate while others are involved in a spoken conversation; but two competing conversations can cause problems – as happened to me in ’94 – when I tried to talk to my clients, while the telesales teams chatted to their prospects.
Here are five tips to help you reduce both types of conflict, by improving how your workplace sounds:
1 Fit the form to the function:
Too often, traditionally, the opposite has happened.
If you’re able to set aside different spaces for different work modes (and make using them part of your culture), it will eliminate so many overt disputes, along with a lot more underlying conflict.
Although if you can’t do that, there are alternatives.
2 If open-plan working is your best, or only, option, find out what it sounds like:
That’s one of those blindingly obvious suggestions, which plenty of managers overlook!
ISO 3382-3:2022 sets out how to assess the soundscape in an open-plan setting. It looks at factors like:
· The ‘Spacial decay rate of speech’ – how quickly the sound level drops as you move away from the source;
· The ‘Speech Transmission Index’ – how ‘intelligible’ or clear the speech is; and
· The ‘comfort distance – how far apart people need to be for their speech to become ‘comfortably non-intrusive’ for one another.
The guidance is written for the industry, rather than the general public; but if you just want to understand the performance goals such as comfort distances, you don’t need an acoustics expert. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for accurate measurements, whether:
As a base-line, before you make changes,
· To assess the effectiveness of any changes you’ve made or
· Because you need to conform to a specific standard,
it’s a good idea to bring in a practitioner.
3 Block understanding:
If you know my work, you’ll know I normally say the opposite, but there is an exception (which I suppose proves the rule?!) I touched on it in the last section, when I mentioned the ‘Speech Transmission Index’.
As Julian has pointed out, conversation is the most distracting sound we have to deal with at work – and as research consistently shows, higher speech intelligibility equals higher distraction. So it really helps to incorporate design features which make potentially distracting speech more difficult to understand.
ISO 22955:2021 gives design guidance for acoustic quality in open-plan offices, including:
· zoning by activity – if you can’t accommodate different work modes in different rooms, can you allocate areas in the same room?;
· surface treatments – including sound-absorbing floor, wall and ceiling materials;
· furniture/screens –including their positioning as well as what they’re made of; and
· masking options – using a constant sound to blur speech, without raising the noise level.
Most of this document is written for architects and designers. Although there are situations where you can use it yourself, even if you don’t have any relevant expertise. For example:
· understanding the principles – eg learning how noise affects collaboration vs. concentration;
· setting performance goals – eg deciding whether you need collaborative spaces, quiet zones or a mix; and
· making zoning part of the culture – helping staff to understand why they need to use the specific areas for specific types of work.
Anything involving:
· Acoustic measurements,
· Calculations and predictions or
· complex office layouts – such as where two different teams (or even different organisations) share a floor,
Needs an expert.
4 Don’t rely on headphones:
Headphones offering Active noise cancelling are popular, especially for phone work; but they have their limits. They can be great for reducing the effects of general noise, but they don’t tend to do much for nearby speech – unless they’re combined with masking.
5 Look at the full picture:
If you’re aiming to improve your office soundscape, combine measurements of noise levels, types of noise and acoustics with short surveys, asking about people’s mood and stress levels. Research has shown that noise-related stress can rise, even when immediate indicators of performance or productivity don’t drop.
You can listen to the podcast:
‘Investing in Conversation – Conflict Management for Managers’, including
Julian’s bonus episode:
‘Why Architects Need to Use their Ears at
You can also find the series on many of the major podcast directories.
If you need help with any aspect of conflict management at work, or if you’d like more information about any of the resources I’ve referred to here, come and talk to me! All my details are on the website:
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