Aquent
Aquent is a Boston-based global marketing firm offering a broad range of staffing services to help global companies add technical expertise to their marketing and creative departments, increase the bandwidth of their in-house teams, and achieve higher quality creative work.
When planning a new space for its corporate headquarters, Aquent wanted to avoid the lack of functional collaboration spaces that plagued its former office, choosing to create a single 12,000 square foot area with no cubicle partitions or assigned seating. But while this vision of a wide-open workplace was an appealing one, the absence of walls and other barriers that block sound meant something would be needed to support speech privacy and decrease noise distractions.
Fortunately, Biamp’s Qt 600 Sound Masking System’s unmatched engineering and minimal design proved to be the perfect solution for Aquent’s open ceiling design concept.
SOLUTION
Huntsman Architectural Group, the firm who designed the space, recommended that sound masking be incorporated to ensure acoustic comfort. For the open office concept Aquent envisioned, the ability to cover up excess speech noise with unobtrusive background noise would be essential.
Ultimately, Biamp’s Qt® 600 system, part of the Cambridge family of sound masking solutions, was chosen for its superior uniformity of coverage and the fact that its small, sleek Qt® Emitters would complement Aquent’s vision. Installed by Biamp’s integration partner Connectivity Point, the barely visible Qt Emitters placed throughout the office’s open ceiling were connected by cables to an intuitive Qt 600 control module rack mounted in the server room.
We’re extremely proud of our new headquarters, and sound masking is a big part of making sure the space feels private and comfortable.
ALLEN FLETCHER
Global Headquarters Operations Team Manager
Aquent
Conclusion
Aquent’s new office is everything they hoped it would be, excelling in both form and function. “You can still hear the people right next you, which is great because that facilitates the collaborative effect we were going for in the first place,” says Allen Fletcher, Global Headquarters Operations Team Manager. “But conversations over 15 feet away tend to fade into the background, making them less distracting and easier for employees to focus on individual tasks.”
Aquent also installed sound masking in its Los Angeles office, and the technology will be part of future satellite office renovations. “We’re extremely proud of our new headquarters, and sound masking is a big part of making sure the space feels private and comfortable,” says Fletcher.