Can ‘Pods’ Bring Quiet to the Noisy Open Office?

Re:Can ‘Pods’ Bring Quiet to the Noisy Open Office? by chris-hexx on Wednesday July 03, 2019 @05:45PM (#20349165)

Open office is the future on average, just because it's the best you can do for dollar/worker/sqft. Offices with doors, we are told, are too expensive, because they're accounted for differently as part of the building, not part of depreciating furnishings and equipment.

Under that constraint, I don't understand why soundproofed full height cubicle walls with closing doors aren't the obvious compromise between what can be sold and what can be installed. Is it fire code? Do businesses who care about productivity spring for actual offices?

There appears to be a niche here, and I don't see why it's not filled.

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Re:Can ‘Pods’ Bring Quiet to the Noisy Open Office? by caseyf7 on Wednesday July 03, 2019 @06:02PM (#20349349)

The commercial real estate owners are also to blame. They used to have to build out the office space to a tenants wishes to attract tenants. It is much cheaper and easier for them to take out the walls/offices and tell the clients to furnish it how you want. While open offices are cool and there are more tenants than space, the owners refuse to do anything else.

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Re:Can ‘Pods’ Bring Quiet to the Noisy Open Office? by aidenn0 on Wednesday July 03, 2019 @05:52PM (#20349246)

Ah, I had wondered about offices not being used more. I wonder if demountable walls[1] might count as furnishings.

1: http://e2walls.com/p2/ultrawall/

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