Reverberant by Design: How Open-Plan Offices Became Accidental Interference Chambers—and What Architecture Can Do About It
The modern open-plan office was designed to foster collaboration, but its acoustic properties have produced an unintended consequence: a persistent constructive interference environment that degrades speech intelligibility and impairs cognitive performance. Drawing on acoustic physics and recent workplace neuroscience, this investigation examines how reflective surfaces and undifferentiated floor plans amplify rather than absorb ambient noise—and what evidence-based design strategies can restore