2025
17,990 SF
Pittsburgh, PA
The design leverages abundant exterior glazing to flood the office with natural light, enhancing openness and visual connectivity across the floorplate. Strategically placed glazing at the front and rear of private office volumes allows daylight to penetrate deep into the workspace, creating a bright, inviting environment that supports both collaboration and focus.
On other floors, noisy workstations had impacted focus and comfort. To address this concern, we specified a PET felt feature ceiling in the open office area most affected, paired with a sound masking system. The ceiling absorbs reverberation and reduces sound bounce, improving overall acoustics and speech clarity.
Early feedback from this floor indicates the solution is effective, with occupants already noticing reduced noise and improved comfort compared with similar layouts elsewhere in the building. This installation serves as a test for implementing the solution on other floors in this building and in additional office locations across the United States.
We worked with this client to maximize acoustic privacy, creating environments that prioritize comfort, wellness, and productivity. The free address offices were designed with careful attention to acoustic performance, ensuring that flexibility and collaboration do not come at the expense of privacy or comfort. In the free-address enclosed office spaces and phone rooms, we installed high-CAC (Ceiling Attenuation Class) acoustic ceiling treatments to reduce sound transmission between spaces. These treatments are complemented by a comprehensive sound-masking system that further minimizes distractions and maintains speech privacy, creating an environment where employees can focus or collaborate without interference.
This office features an entirely free address environment, extending the concept beyond open workstations to include all private offices. Employees are not assigned to a specific desk or office, allowing them to choose the workspace that best supports their tasks on any given day. This includes focused work in private offices, collaboration in open areas, or informal meetings in shared spaces. By applying free address principles throughout the office, we were able to maximize space efficiency and support a hybrid workstyle. Flexible seating and private office availability encourage spontaneous collaboration, increase employee engagement, and allow the office to adapt seamlessly to changing occupancy patterns. From a design perspective, this approach creates a dynamic, user-centered environment that balances privacy, focus, and interaction.