My personal experience - the acoustics of open offices are generally awful. The past two days in a row, for example, have started with me actually saying out loud "what the hell is that sound?!" to my neighbor after hearing some weird-ass HVAC squealing/squeaking/screeching sounds.
No partitions, lots of collaboration, no noise cancelling.
HVAC noise is a constant, but not in any helpful way.
I can hear people 40 yards away having a conversation - not the contents of it, but I hear voices, and yes they are totally distracting.
I clicked it at work. We're in a temporary space with a few dozen 3 and 4 person offices, all have floor-to-ceiling walls and doors. The acoustics are pretty good. Even the loud talkers are tolerable, for the most part.
When we had an open office... the acoustics were terrible. Conversations at a normal volume could be heard far away, conference calls were (had to be) done on speakerphone with the volume maxed out to hear. It looked great, but it was awful for everyone who didn't enjoy talking very loudly.
Hoping that the new space has head-high partitions, maybe offices for each team with floor-to-ceiling walls, a ceiling with either pockets to reduce echoes or a proper ceiling.
An office built for working with the people we work with, not being able to talk to someone 50 feet away without walking.
My personal experience - the acoustics of open offices are generally awful. The past two days in a row, for example, have started with me actually saying out loud "what the hell is that sound?!" to my neighbor after hearing some weird-ass HVAC squealing/squeaking/screeching sounds.
No partitions, lots of collaboration, no noise cancelling.
HVAC noise is a constant, but not in any helpful way.
I can hear people 40 yards away having a conversation - not the contents of it, but I hear voices, and yes they are totally distracting.