After decades of open-plan office adoption, noise has become the most frequently cited workplace complaint and the most consistently documented productivity liability in modern office environments. As hybrid work has made the office primarily a destination for collaborative and relational activities, the acoustic demands on the spaces that host individual focus work have intensified — because employees now do much of their individual work at home, and come to the office for the meetings, calls, and collaboration sessions that specifically require audio quality and speech privacy. Office acoustic design is a top 2025 priority (OP Group, 2026) precisely because the hybrid shift has made speech privacy more critical, not less.