Julian Treasure takes the stage at TEDGlobal 2009, sharing the shocking fact that — when you can hear others talking in an open office — productivity dips by 66%.

Julian Treasure cares very deeply for your ears. That’s why he’s given TED talks like “The 4 ways sound affects us” and “Why architects need to use their ears.” Treasure is on a mission to make policymakers, engineers, architects and, well, Julian Treasure: Shh! Sound health in 8 stepseveryone think more about what they hear around them — because the way things sound have a tangible, measurable effect on how we feel, how we heal, how we work and how we live.

To this end, Treasure’s The Sound Agency has teamed up with Biamp Systems to create a whitepaper called “Building in Sound,” a look at the data linking sound and well-being.

“This paper is based on exhaustive review of academic papers, and reports from national governments and multinational bodies, going back some 40 years,” it begins. “The research examines the causes and impacts of sound on our health, recovery from illness or surgery, our ability to absorb information and learn, our productivity, and general sense of wellbeing.”

Read the paper in full, or check out some of the most fascinating facts below.

1. The estimated cost of noise pollution is $30.8 billion a year — and that’s just in Europe.  The World Health Organization Europe’s 2011 report, “Burden of disease from environmental noise,” analyzes the relationship between environmental noise and health. In this study, they calculate the financial cost of lost work days, healthcare treatment, impaired learning and decreased productivity due to noise. The total they came up with is staggering, considering they’re looking at just one continent.
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2. Each year, noise pollution takes a day off the life of every adult and child in Europe. This same study also looked at the cost of noise pollution in terms of lost life expectancy. Shockingly, they determined that every 365 days, one million years are taken off European’s collective life expectancy — averaging to a day per person.
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3. If you can hear someone talking while you’re reading or writing, your productivity dips by up to 66%.  Open floor-plan offices distract workers without them even noticing it. In a classic study published in the British Journal of Psychology in 1998, researchers found that employers were highly distracted when they could hear conversation around them, and less able to perform their duties. Another classic study found that noise in the office also correlated to increased stress hormone levels and a lower willingness to engage with others. According to Sound Agency case study, when sound masking technology was used in an office, there was a 46% improvement in employees’ ability to concentrate and their short term memory accuracy increased 10 percent.
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4. The average noise level in many classrooms is not just associated with impaired learning — but with permanent hearing loss. Noise can deeply affect learning too. The WHO recommends a noise level in classrooms akin to that you’d find in a library — 35 decibels. However, a study in Germany found that the actual average noise volume in classrooms is 65 decibels — a level associated with permanent hearing loss. As Treasure outlines in this talk, for a student sitting in the fourth row of a traditional classroom, speech intelligibility is just 50 percent — meaning that they only hear half of what their teacher says.
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5. A 20 decibel increase in aircraft noise is enough to delay a student’s reading level by up to 8 months. A study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology in 2006 looked at 2000 students between the ages of 9 and 10 in schools in The Netherlands, Spain and the U.K. — many in schools near airports. They found that aircraft noise was associated with impaired reading comprehension.
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6. 50% of teachers have experienced damage to their voice from talking over classroom noise. A study of teachers published in the Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research in 2004, noted another side-effect of noise pollution in classrooms — 50% of teachers have suffered irreversible damage to their voices. Why? Because as the environment gets noisier, we speak more loudly.
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7. The average noise level in some hospital wards not only impedes healing — but could legally require hearing protection. The WHO recommends noise levels in hospital wards to stay around 35 decibels. But a study in the US found the average noise level in hospital wards is actually closer to 95 decibels — just 10 decibels beyond the noise level at which U.S. federal law requires ear protection for prolonged exposure. Sleep is crucial for patient recovery, and yet with the constant beeps, tones and shuffling, the body feels that it is under threat. Not to mention that staff errors increase the greater the level of distracting noise.
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8. 3% of cardiac arrest cases in Germany have been explicitly linked to traffic noise. Treasure found this alarming fact in a 2009 press release from the Environmental Protection UK.
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9. Noise pollution may possibly even contribute to crime. When the city of Lancaster, California, installed a sound system featuring birdsong along a half-mile stretch of a main road, there was a 15 percent reduction in reported crime, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal. Similarly, when the London Underground started playing classical music at a crime-heavy station, robberies fell by 33% while assaults on staff dropped 25%, says The Independent.

Below, an infographic further outlining the problem.

Through visual art, composition and performance, deaf artist Christine Sun Kim explores ways of transmuting sound and silence to come to terms with her relationship with it. In the process, she challenges the ways in which the hearing take sound for granted. Here, she talks about her work and career path.

Did you always know you wanted to become an artist?

No, I just had a lot of small experiences. I remember my mother always took me to the laundromat with her. To keep me busy, she’d draw pumpkins on napkins. It was around Halloween time, and I would draw in all the different faces. Little things like that. I always liked church because at Sunday school, the Bible was taught using pictures. All these different experiences and exposures slowly added up to my life as an artist.

So I knew it was in me, but I was uncertain for a long time. When I first went to grad school — I went to the School of Visual Arts — I had a hard time expressing myself and I never really enjoyed painting, so I had to find a balance. And that was a struggle. Finding your path as an artist is difficult. So I feel really lucky that I’ve now found my way.

You talked about sound etiquette in your TED2013 Fellows talk. You were told as a child to not make noise. How can you have known how not to make noise if you couldn’t hear it? That must have been very confusing.

It’s based on my intuition. I could sense people’s reactions. For example, in school, if I dragged my feet on the ground, people would say, “Shhhh.” My family’s Korean, so they’re somewhat somber and still. I tend to be loud with my expressions, and my family would tell me to tone it down. I knew I was very animated, but that was my language. People always say, “It’s like you’re performing,” and I respond, “That’s my language.” It’s funny. But yeah, I just had to follow social cues.

All the customs and social norms, all the rules were in my face every day. I’d go into a theater and I knew that I’d have to sit, be quiet and walk slowly. It was learned behavior from people’s reactions around me: it depended on how and if people looked at me. If everyone’s eyes were on me, I knew I was being loud or doing something “wrong.”

Even now, I always like to stay in control of my sound. I have my phone off. I often don’t have it on vibrate. My TV has the sound off. This allows me to have control, so I know it’s not making noise. I was dating a hearing guy. He would come stay at my house a lot and would turn everything on. I kept telling him I wanted it off. He would reply, “Well I’m hearing.” But that was strange because it was my relationship with sound. I wanted to be in control, so I wanted everything off. I didn’t like the extra noise floating around me because I wouldn’t know what it was.

“as forte as possible”, black ink on paper. Photo: Christine Sun Kim

So you are very aware of this thing called “sound,” even though you’ve never experienced it…

Right.

…because it’s mirrored back by the people around you.

As a society, the majority of people hear. And I mirror them. I have to follow what they’re doing. It was not like society gave me a clear, safe place to do whatever I wanted. I had to learn how to integrate to their ways. And the more aware I become of the noises and the norms, the more I play around with that in my artwork. The more experience I had trying to become accustomed to the norms, the more I tried to use that as material for my artwork. And oddly, that made my voice clearer.

You translate sound into other forms as an investigation and performance. Is this investigation primarily for yourself, or is it for others? To what degree do you keep your audience in mind when you’re playing?

It’s mostly about myself and my journey as an artist. Its about my relationship to and my perspective of sound as it keeps changing. It’s everlasting, it’s nonstop.

In my past work, I was doing a one-to-one translation like sound to vibration, working with sound to create painterly imprints. I don’t know if that really translates. It’s very limited and deals with low frequencies only, and that’s just one aspect of sound. That’s why I let go of the idea of translating it. Now I’m trying to develop my own information system and new theories of what sound should or could be, using new forms.

Most people who write music have this idea of silence, but they can hear and they use that to define or shape silence, or vice versa. So how can I learn the idea of sound and silence from their perspective? I can’t relate to that. So I’m starting over from scratch with everything. I’m redefining things. It’s not scientific evidence. People always ask me if I use sound waves in my art, but I’m not really interested in that.

Can you tell me about the various ways that you experience sound without hearing it? I’m curious how this ties into your artwork and the various ways you explore. For example, I’d love to hear a bit more about Feedback Aftermath.

I played with feedback for hours one night and then went home. At home I didn’t feel good and felt anxious. I couldn’t sleep well that night and I didn’t want to go back to the studio for one week. That was disconcerting. And then when I watched the video of myself — because I videotape myself sometimes — I felt sort of stressed out and uneasy. Later I realized that it had an impact on me, an extreme impact, like post-traumatic stress. Most hearing people don’t experience that. You have warning signals. If your ears hurt, you leave the room, you stop, you step away. I don’t have those signals, so I went past all warnings and experienced feedback to the full degree.

So how does the feedback enter your body, if not through sound?

There’s different ways sound has an impact on the body. Sound doesn’t enter only through the ears. It can go through the full body and also your psyche. More and more, people are starting to develop sonic warfare to use as a tool, as a weapon.

I have a story about this: To get into my apartment you have to go through one building, then walk through a courtyard and then enter a second building. Once a friend of mine, who is a real estate agent, came over and once inside my apartment said, “Oh, it’s so quiet in here. It shouldn’t be wasted on you” — because New York is so noisy, so loud. But I realized I need that too. I used to live in a really crowded area, and I never felt fully rested. But in my home now, I can pass out and sleep for hours; I feel really rested. Noise truly does have an impact on my body.

Untitled Speaker Drawings, Haverford College, PA, 2012. Photo: Lisa Boughter

You talk a lot in your work about the idea of sound as a currency. What do you mean by this?

For hearing people, information is captured via the ear, through sound. But you can look elsewhere and you are still getting information. With sign language, you have to be focused on what you’re seeing. Many things are dependent on sound, like Siri on the phone, voice commands. Sometimes I struggle with that, getting people to look at me or write back and forth, but they’re constantly looking away. Eye contact is lost, as is communication.

And the music world is huge. Music and sound are culturally dominant. Everyone lives in the music world and I’m constantly amazed with the way they remember lyrics. For example: if they hear a few words, then they instantly know the song — that’s a very strong cultural aspect of the hearing world. And even artists depend on that. Online videos are cultural connections, but most of them aren’t captioned. Visual sentences and visual language occupy a limited space in comparison to sound. So that’s why I’m trying to play around with this idea of voice. In fact, I just did my first vinyl record with a collaborator.

What’s on it?

It incorporates a lot of different concepts I play around with. My voice is on the record, experimenting with sound. (I don’t use my voice often.) There are two records, one for the left side and one for the right side, and it comes with a list of instructions on how to listen to both of them. You are to follow these rules. You put the records on two turntables, the left on your left, the right on your right, and play them simultaneously. The right record has been designed to play loops at normal volume, the left plays continuously at low volume.

This is a reflection of growing up with hearing aids. I’m completely deaf, but I can hear a tiny bit on the right, with the help of aids. (I can’t actually recognize or identify what the sound is; it’s just noise.) The right record reflects this imbalance: it is a little bit louder, a little bit clearer. The left side plays seamlessly, while on the right side the different loops actually stop, it gets stuck. To continue playing the record, you have to go over and physically move the needle. It’ll play for a little longer and then you’ll have to move it again. So it becomes laborious — it becomes more work for the right side. This tangible interaction echoes my experience of hearing aids.

“Seeing Voice, The Seven-Tone Color Spectrum” in collaboration with Center for Experimental Lectures and Recess Activities, NYC, 2013. Photo: Eugene Gladun

What is deaf culture? Is there such a thing?

Oh, yeah. Disability has its own culture too. But deaf culture revolves around language (technically, we’re a linguistic minority), and it’s a collective culture. People are very supportive of each other. It has its ways like any other culture. For example, one behavior that’s culturally deaf is that, if you grew up with a strong deaf identity, then when you’re sitting at a table and you’re signing, if somebody joins the conversation, people don’t look up. They know you’re there, they continue talking, but they automatically move over to allow somebody else in. There’s no interruption in the conversation. They have very simple rules and ways like that, and it adds up to cultural norms.

So it’s kind of got an etiquette of its own.

For sure. It’s very physical and visual. Deaf people are also extremely straightforward. I love that. When I went to Germany, talking to deaf Germans was very easy. It was a different sign language, but the second you meet each other you are instantly friends. Different languages have different sign languages, but the expressions, ideas and concepts are similar. I think it’s easier for deaf people to communicate amongst their different languages than hearing people.

You’ve been talking about the difference between American Sign Language and English as though they’re different — for example, with the translation of this interview (which was conducted live, with a translator). So how are they different, and how do you navigate the difference when you’re writing versus signing? Do you think differently?

It’s sort of like writing from Chinese to Spanish or Spanish to French.

That different?

Yeah. Really. Very different. That’s why I think ASL is an unique language. ASL is derived from French Sign Language mixed with home sign language. It’s influenced by those, but has its own formalized grammar. The tone is conveyed through body movement and facial expressions.

I like using the piano as a metaphor. Playing the piano is similar to ASL. When you put your pinky finger down that’s one note. Each finger has its separate notes, and all together you have 10 notes. So if you put them down at the same time, they become a chord. That’s like ASL. It’s not the same as English. It’s spatial, not linear. If you think of a facial expression as one note, then body movement as another note, then speed as another note, hand shape, placement, and so on — all these parts add up to convey the message. When you do it all simultaneously, it becomes a chord.

What about bypassing language altogether? What did you think of Mary Lou Jepsen’s talk about the brain-to-digital interface?

The idea is really creepy, but amazing. It’s a way of communicating without needing language. I do, however, question the politics of it. The people who are developing the program — are they the ones deciding what it would look like? I’m a little fuzzy on the details of it, on what it would look like if executed. Did you see Neil Harbisson’s talk about synesthesia?

Yes. He was amazing.

I was amazed, but it also became political because he picked the colors. There is line that is crossed. What if I wanted to decide for myself? The same parallel exists with the Cochlear implant. It’s limited to only a few channels of sound. The human ear has tons of channels, where the Cochlear implant has a very limited number. So the doctors or manufacturers are the ones deciding what hearing-impaired people will benefit from the most. I have a problem with the politics. That’s my question about this technology. I think it’s a great idea to remove language and to have a different way of communicating, but I’m curious how much control I would have.

What has the TED Fellowship experience been like for you so far?

Mindblowing, maddening, and exhilarating on every level. Initially, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but during the conference, I felt I could completely be myself and there was almost no attitude or ego; everyone was genuinely curious about everyone else. Being exposed to ideas outside of the arts was definitely an eye opener, as I often feel a bit too contained in the art and deaf communities. The TED staff and attendees were extremely supportive of the Fellows program, which made me refreshingly hopeful of my career as an artist. I’m definitely looking forward to potential collaborations with a number of TED folks.

Above: watch “Face Opera,” in which performers took turns conducting and shared-conducting four separate scores on an iPad developed from the different parameters of the language. Roughly 30-40% of American Sign Language is the manual production of the language, while the rest is expressed on the face and through body movement. This is a commentary on how society places value on vocal and spoken languages, leaving little room for visual languages.

Julian Treasure

Julian Treasure: 5 ways to listen better

What speakers have given you the best auditory experience so far?

It was nice to hear Jinsop Lee today talking about the five senses. It’s liberating to start to become conscious of your senses. My work is getting people to listen — it’s like turning up the color on the TV set and, suddenly, you’ve got a new way of experiencing the world. If you do that with smell and taste and touch you start to become much more present. It’s a wonderful thing. That talk was a nice little gift.

I am also very proud to have four London speakers here. I organized the London Talent Search event with Evan Grant. I can’t wait for Rose George (who’ll be speaking in Session 9, “Indelicate Conversation”) and Eleanor Longden (who’ll be speaking in Session 10, “Secret Voices”). And I thought Alastair Parvin yesterday was absolutely brilliant.

Honor Harger: A history of the universe in sound

Today’s TED Weekends on the Huffington Post explores the soundtrack of our universe, featuring essays from Harger and others. Below, find excerpts from three for your reading pleasure.

Honor Harger: Tuning Into the Universe

Images of space are ubiquitous in our lives. We have been surrounded by stunning portrayals of our own solar system and beyond for generations. But in popular culture, we have no sense of what space sounds like. And indeed, most people associate space with silence.

There are, of course, perfectly valid scientific reasons for assuming so. Space is a vacuum. But through radio, we can listen to the Sun’s fizzling solar flares, the roaring waves and spitting fire of Jupiter’s stormy interactions with its moon Io, pulsars’ metronomic beats, or the eerie melodic shimmer of a whistler in the magnetosphere. Read the full essay »

Mario Livio: What Is the Color of the Universe?

Honor Harger’s TED Talk is on radio astronomy, or, in some sense, the “sound” of the universe (even though radio waves are really electromagnetic radiation, just like light). Can we, however, say what the color of the universe is? To answer this question, we must first establish what we actually mean by the “color of the universe.” A reasonable definition would be to add up all the visible radiation emitted by a very large number of galaxies in a huge cosmic volume, and to determine how all of that light might be perceived by the human eye. This is precisely what astronomers Karl Glazebrook and Ivan Baldry attempted to do in 2002. Using a survey of more than 200,000 galaxies (the “2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey”) and reaching to distances of a few billion light-years, they constructed the distribution of the colors (the spectrum) the eye would see if all that light were to be separated into its components by passing it through a prism.

Since our universe is expanding, light from distant galaxies is stretched to longer (redder) wavelengths (a phenomenon known as redshift). The farther away the galaxy, the greater the amount of stretching that occurs. Glazebrook and Baldry removed this effect before combining all the light to form a smoothed-out average color. Read the full essay »

Seth Shostak: Celestial Sound Effects

Remember the tag line for the 1979 sci-fi flick Alien? It was boldly emblazoned on the film’s advertising posters, and helpfully informed the public that “in space, no one can hear you scream.”

Well, of course that’s true; at least if you’re floating around without your protective helmet and its built-in walkie-talkie. But then again if you’re bare-headed in space, the fact that no one can hear the noises you’re making is scarcely your biggest problem.

Nonetheless, there’s a widespread perception that space — which after all, is mostly air-free — is as silent as the shadows. Read the full essay »

Ernesto Sirolli learned a big lesson, thanks to a group of hippos.

In this hilarious talk from TEDxEQChCh, economic development expert Ernesto Sirolli recalls spending 1971 to 1977 in Africa working for an Italian NGO. The experience was a comedy of errors.

“Every single project we set up in Africa failed,” says Sirolli. “I was distraught. I thought — age 21 — that we Italians were good people and we were doing good work in Africa. Instead, everything we touched, we killed.”

Sirolli’s first project in Africa was teaching people in Zambia how to grow tomatoes, zucchini and other Italian favorites. He shares, “Instead of asking them why they were not growing anything, we simply said, ‘Thank God we’re here.’”

Sirolli and his fellow aid workers were thrilled to see the crops grow remarkably well. But, as harvesting time approached, they watched in horror as 200 hippos stormed out of a nearby river and ate everything in sight. All of a sudden, Sirolli understood why the locals hadn’t been interested in growing food.

Aid from Western countries tends to come in two forms, says Sirolli — paternalistic and patronizing. And yet after decades in international aid, he has seen that neither works. Instead, Sirolli champions a type of aid he calls “enterprise facilitation.”

“The first principle of aid is respect,” shares Sirolli. “You become a servant of the local passion, of local people who have a dream to become a better person. What you do is you shut up, you never arrive in a community with any ideas, and you sit with the local people … become friends. Find out what that person wants to do … You have to create a new profession — be the family doctor of enterprise, who sits with you in your house at the kitchen table and helps you find a way to transform your passion into a way to make a living.”

To hear more about why Sirolli believes the key to international aid is listening to local people with ideas, watch his passion-filled talk. Here, watch seven other TED Talks that stress the importance of listening.

Julian Treasure: 5 ways to listen better
Human beings only retain about 25% of what they hear, shares sound consultant Julian Treasure at TEDGlobal 2011. In this fast-paced talk, Treasure gives five simple exercises to boost our ability to listen to each other, from seeking out three minutes of silence a day to taking time to savor the sound of a washer and dryer.

Evelyn Glennie: How to truly listen
Listening to music isn’t just about allowing sound waves to ripple through your ears. In this talk from TED2003, deaf percussionist Evelyn Glennie shares how listening is a full-bodied and brained activity.

Ethan Zuckerman: Listening to global voices
The internet does an impressive job of surrounding people with voices that sound a lot like their own. In this talk from TEDGlobal 2010, Ethan Zuckerman stresses the importance of listening to those from completely different backgrounds, living very different experiences, and gives advice on how anyone can open up their Twitter and Facebook feeds to get insights from across the globe.

Stanley McChrystal: Listen, learn … then lead
Stanley McChrystal is a four-star general, the former commander of U.S. and International forces in Afghanistan. In this talk from TED2011, he explains that leadership is about far more than giving orders. According to McChrystal, it’s as much about listening and taking in knowledge from those under you.

Neil Harbisson: I listen to color
Artist Neil Harbisson is completely color blind. But at TEDGlobal 2012, he shares how he is able to experience color through a robotic eye that renders the palette of the world as sound. As Harbisson reveals, this amazing eye makes going to the supermarket “like going to a nightclub,” thanks to the different noises it creates.

Evan Williams on listening to Twitter users
When Twitter co-founder Evan Williams spoke at TED2009, the web service was new and growing fast. In this talk, he shows some of the fascinating ideas that can bubble up through the 140-character platform, as well as how they inspire a different type of sharing that requires a new type of listening.

Honor Harger: A history of the universe in sound
What does space sound like? In this talk from TEDSalon London Spring 2011, artist Honor Harger reveals what the sun, stars and planets sound like. But beyond that, she shares how she converts the radio waves emitted by celestial bodies into “the oldest song you’ll ever here.”

Architects design with their eyes rather than their ears — which means that spaces generally look great and sound terrible. At TEDGlobal 2012 University, sound consultant Julian Treasure warned that — even though we’re rarely conscious of sound — terrible acoustics can have very negative effects on our well-being.

“We’re designing environments that make us crazy,” says Treasure in this talk, which is a treat for the eardrums. “It’s not just our quality of life that suffers. It’s our health, our social behavior and our productivity as well.”

For example, Treasure notes that sound levels in hospitals have doubled in recent years. Sleep is absolutely crucial for patient recovery, and yet with the constant beeps, tones and shuffling, the body feels that it is under threat. Not to mention that staff errors increase the greater the level of distracting noise.

Classrooms generally have terrible soundscapes too. As Treasure explains, for a student sitting in the fourth row of a traditional classroom, speech intelligibility is just 50 percent, meaning that they only hear half of what their teacher says. And that doesn’t even count students with impaired hearing, or who are listening to a second language in the classroom.

To get a true picture of how disorienting poorly designed spaces can sound, watch Treasure’s talk. Below, check out tips from Treasure himself on improving sound in classrooms, hospitals, restaurants, offices and more.

Four steps to heavenly hearing…

1. Acoustics. Get these right in the first place and life is so much easier. Involve an acoustician at the planning stage: it costs far more to fix problems once the plan is a building. Even then, there are many solutions that can look great and massively help sound – for example absorbing panels that can now be printed with graphics or pictures.

2. Noise. Remove or damp down as many noise sources as possible, from chillier cabinets and air handling machinery to noisy floors and moving surfaces that clash, like steel chair legs on stone floors. Train your staff to listen for them all the time.

3. Sound system. Don’t value engineer this down to the cheapest components. If you are going to play sound, make sure its quality matches the quality of experience you want people to have in your space. Use a top pro-audio partner and listen to their advice.

4. Soundscape. Your soundscape should be ACE: appropriate for the function of the space, congruent with your values or brand, and effective in supporting the people in what they are doing, whether it’s eating, working or sleeping. Don’t play mindless music for the sake of it. Explore more creative, designed soundscapes. The best route is to start with silence and then decorate it, only adding sound where it adds value.

A great exercise is to tour your space with your eyes closed to feel what the sound is doing.

Now, some tips for specific environments…

For classrooms. Reverberation time (RT) is crucial: the Essex study in the UK that I mentioned in my talk has shown that reducing RT, especially at low frequencies, can improve speech intelligibility (SI) dramatically, benefiting both academic results and class behaviour. Use acousticians to model your planned or existing spaces and get RT down to under half a second across all frequencies. Measure and monitor your SI.

For hospitals. Make sure that needless noise is monitored and eliminated — no squeaks, banging doors etc. Issue soft-soled footwear if you can’t damp corridors in other ways. Train the staff in quiet working. Install relaxing soundscapes in waiting spaces. Check that there is privacy in areas where confidential conversations are taking place. Offer masking sounds for patients to help with sleep.

For restaurants. Don’t fall into the trap of accepting a design with all hard surfaces. If you must have a hard floor, make sure your chairs and tables (and waiters) have soft feet. Design zones with different RTs to vary liveness, and offer people options when seating them. Be careful of open plan kitchens: they pollute the space with a lot of noise. A glass wall can give the same visual effect without deadening the customers. Take the coffee and smoothie machines out of the customer space! Measure and monitor your sound pressure level when busy: anything over 75 dB is getting very uncomfortable.

For offices. Don’t fall into the trap of one size fits all. People need to do different things in offices, so create different soundscapes for them – from quiet working space, to open plan team working space, to social space and anything else you may need. Use natural masking sound rather than, or on top of, pink noise if your office is too quiet. Plan your setting so that noisy teams are away from quiet ones, with suitable dividers in between.