I am always surprised people are so opinionated about open floor plans. Unless we are talking about sirens and crying babies, I can just ignore the background noise and keep working. Although I have been sharing a room with someone or another since I was 3 years old, so filtering out noise might to just a sanity mechanism at this point.
"While I agree that there are some downsides to an open floor plan (sound, cleaning, etc)"
Sound could be mitigated at least somewhat if these rooms weren't so often hardwood floors, windows, and drywall on every surface. I'll cop to being at least somewhat above average on sensitivity to such things, but while a big space will always have a certain big space-y sound to it, it doesn't have to be a booming echo where the high-frequency sounds bounce around for seconds at a time.
I did, but that was never enough: even 37dB ear muffs aren't enough to completely suppress the noise of a conversation happening nearby, but the ear muffs plus the walls and the door are.
And, of course, as others point out, the auditory distractions are only part of the problem with an open floor plan.
I wish people spoke more about noise insulation in apartments.
If I don't have a baby, I don't want to be woken up in the middle of the night by crying babies. If I don't have any children, I don't want to hear them yelling all day long.
A lot of my friends who in their younger years held this position rapidly backpedaled after they added babies to their homes. There are very effective sound mitigation solutions available though, if you're willing and able to afford to remodel the room(s) you want to defend against such external sounds.
I interpret such actions as what to normally expect in a lower trust society and culture. We pay for such settings in many different ways.
I think that depends... open floorplans already have plenty of ambient noise usually. Chatter, people on phones and web calls. If the voice input picked up in a small range and people got in the habit of kinda semi-whispering their occasional commands... I doubt it'd be a massive difference.
But I'm assuming lots of things, I can also envision your scenario playing out to great annoyance.
As a contrasting anecdote: I've got an otherwise satisfactory shared living setup right now, but the fact that I can hear everything -- and hear everything well, especially conversation in the kitchen, footfalls on the main staircase adjacent to one wall, and footfalls in the room above mine -- essentially means I'm unable to sleep when and for as long as I choose (and often not getting as much sleep as I need). It's pretty common for +30db impulses to find their way through my walls and ceiling.
My options for fixing this problem seem to be moving, invest in soundproofing for a property I don't own, or somehow get a significant behavior modification program to take sustained root among 9 other people (some under 8 years of age).
All of them suck, but I'm leaning toward the first one.
The open plan spaces are very noisy, personally I wouldn't be able to get anything done. If you can, get a separate unit and make sure to put a carpet on the floor, e.g. DEKOWE that can be made to measure, to dampen the echo cause by the glass walls and wooden floors.
I don't hear anyone around me but I only share one wall with another apartment and I'm on the top floor so no one above me. That said, noise leaks to and from the hallways.
Maybe I'm antisocial, but noise from housemates drives me up the wall. I can't relax or concentrate with the sounds of people doing things adjacent rooms, and headphones only mask certain kinds of noises, and sometimes you don't want to wear headphones.
The hab's design would be better if it gave people more privacy and separated the rooms around the circumference, and had better soundproofing.
I understand your problem with noise. I've had many people suggest that I use headphones or play music but I find that equally distracting. I learned something recently that might add some understanding to your problem. It's called Highly Sensitive Person (HSP), you can read about it at wikipedia:
If moving to a place without shared walls is not an option, you might want to shift your schedule a bit. Continue to work while they are not home and also work after they've gone to bed. Then it's very quiet.
The link you cite shows them stacked. If that was your circumstance, how did you find the noise level?
My long-standing issue with any living space: I don't need a lot of space nor luxury, but I do (desperately) need peace and quiet, when I am not deliberately socializing.
Sound is so hard to shop for - in every product category.
Im shopping for a home now and I detest open floor plan homes because I was raised in a large family and know how a house sounds when sound can take the shortest path to reach your ears. Similarly, in my area the style of renovated homes is to strip the ceiling of any tiles or insulation to expose the bare baseboards to the room below - which is essentially a giant diaphragm to propagate footsteps. Laundries have moved upstairs or into kitchens and pantries to add a spare bathroom or bedroom/office in the basement as well.
The cumulative effect of all these changes is to make homes louder. But you would never notice it until you lived there.
On the plus side modern double paned windows with argon/low pressure gaps (often sold as energy efficiency windows) and good weather sealing makes an enormous difference in sound isolation from the outside. It's an expensive upgrade, to be sure, but well worth it.
That and some hidden foam paneling with thick carpets to reduce echoes, but that is mostly an illusion and doesn't affect sound transmission between rooms.
> I don't necessarily want noise insulation within a dwelling, but I sure want it insulated from my neighbors.
For me, this would be the goal. Being able to hear the next room over for loud noises could be a safety issue, but hearing my neighbor has never been a positive. I can see zones of sounds inside a dwelling (e.g. kitchen - dining room - living room sound separated from bedrooms or office).
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