Design
Can ‘Pods’ Bring Quiet to the Noisy Open Office?
Now that office walls have come down, workers are ducking into closet-sized “pods” for privacy and quiet. Is this a retreat from the open office or the next phase of it?
After 30 minutes in the anechoic test chamber, you start to hear your heart beating. Then, you can make out the joints crinkling in your arms and legs, the carotid arteries pumping in your head, and maybe, if you listen very closely, the air flowing in and out of your lungs.
“Every sound [people inside] hear is the sound of their own body,” said Steve Orfield, who runs Orfield Laboratories, an acoustic lab in Minneapolis where scientists test the decibel levels of Harley-Davidsons and the way sound reverberates off concert-hall chairs.