Open-plan offices were meant to improve the flow of information, shorten the distance between teams and encourage collaboration. In many workplaces, they do exactly that. Until someone needs to analyse a lengthy document, prepare a proposal, hold a difficult conversation or spend an hour thinking through a single problem without listening to other people’s meetings.
That is when the search for silence begins.
Focus zone design does not mean returning to corridors lined with closed offices. It means creating conditions within an open space that allow people to step away from conversations, movement and visual clutter for a while. Sometimes a small change in layout is enough. Sometimes a piece of furniture needs to take over part of the role traditionally played by a wall.
The open-plan office is not the problem. The lack of choice is
The debate over whether an office should be open or closed no longer contributes much to the design of contemporary workplaces. Teams do not perform one type of task throughout the day. Within just a few hours, an employee may attend a meeting, respond to messages, discuss a project, take part in an online call and prepare material that requires full concentration.
Each of these activities needs different conditions.
Gensler research shows that employees prefer a model combining open areas for teamwork with private spaces for tasks that require deep focus. The highest-rated workplaces are neither fully open nor fully enclosed, but open environments supported by easily accessible, on-demand spaces that provide privacy.
The aim is not to eliminate the open-plan office. It is to remove the assumption that everyone should work in the same conditions throughout the day.
A well-designed focus zone creates the possibility of change. Employees can use it when a task requires greater attention and return to a more open environment when they need a conversation or a quick consultation. This choice does not isolate them from the team. It allows them to manage their concentration consciously.
Concentration needs a boundary
A boundary does not always need to be a full wall. In an open space, three other types of protection can be just as important: acoustic, visual and social.
Acoustic protection limits the conversations and sounds reaching the workstation. Visual protection reduces movement in the user’s peripheral vision – people walking past, colleagues gesturing, glowing screens. Social protection communicates that the person using the space is not currently available for an informal conversation.
This final function is often underestimated. In an ordinary row of desks, it is difficult to tell whether someone looking at a screen is completing a routine task or trying to solve a complex problem. A clearly defined focus zone acts as a visible signal: work happens differently here.
Research conducted by Steelcase in partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that even visual shielding can help users maintain attention in a noisy, open office. Not every focus zone therefore needs to be a fully enclosed room. Sometimes a well-designed cocoon is enough to reduce the most persistent distractions.
Where should a focus zone be located?
The worst place is at the centre of office traffic. Even the best piece of furniture will not create an atmosphere of concentration if the route to the kitchen, printer or meeting rooms runs directly behind it throughout the day.
Focus zones should be located where the movement of people naturally slows down. The sides of an open-plan area, recesses, spaces near less frequently used walls and zones away from circulation routes and spontaneous meeting points all work well.
This does not mean hiding them at the far end of the building. A focus zone should remain easy to access. If reaching it requires walking through several departments or booking a place well in advance, employees will quickly begin to treat it as a special-purpose room rather than a natural part of everyday work.
The best location therefore meets two conditions: it sits outside the main flow of movement but remains close to the users’ workstations.
It is also worth maintaining sufficient distance from intensive collaboration zones. Placing a focus area next to a project table, coffee machine or video-call zone means constantly competing with the neighbouring function. In such a layout, the focus zone exists on the floor plan but fails in practice.
Putting an armchair in a corner is not enough
An attractive chair, a small table and a lamp may create a visually pleasing composition, but not necessarily a good place to work. Focus zone design should begin with one question: what tasks will be carried out here?
Someone reading a document for twenty minutes needs different conditions from an employee holding a confidential conversation, and both need something different from a person spending two hours preparing a presentation on a laptop.
A zone intended for short periods of work can be more informal. A comfortable seat with back support, a compact work surface and visual shielding may be enough for reviewing materials or taking notes. A place designed for longer periods of concentration should provide fuller ergonomic support, the correct work-surface height, access to power and lighting suited to the task.
Not every lounge chair is a workstation. Not every enclosed booth supports concentration. Function should be defined not by the label on the floor plan, but by the user’s actual comfort.
Furniture can do more than divide space
In focus zone design, furniture should not appear only after the functional layout has been established. It can help create that layout in the first place.
A high backrest limits movement within the field of vision. An upholstered surface softens sound reflections. Properly arranged modules can shield a workstation from circulation routes while keeping it open towards daylight. Freestanding screens make it possible to create boundaries without making permanent changes to the architecture.
A good example is the KLEIBER QUIET acoustic screen system. Its upholstered elements were designed for coworking environments and open office zones. They help reduce noise and improve privacy, while the option of connecting elements at different angles makes it possible to create configurations tailored to a specific interior.
Their role is not limited to placing a divider between two desks. Several elements can form a compact individual work zone, shield a place intended for online calls or separate a quieter part of the open-plan office from an area where consultations take place more frequently.
This is the difference between a piece of furniture placed inside a finished space and one that actively shapes the space itself.
Acoustics begin before the first panel is installed
Focus zone design is often reduced to a discussion about sound-absorbing materials. They matter, but they cannot correct poor functional adjacencies.
If a concentration zone is located next to the kitchen, a single screen will not stop the sound of the coffee machine, conversations and moving chairs. If a team on the other side of the zone conducts most of its online meetings at individual desks, the problem will return regardless of the thickness of the upholstery.
Acoustics must therefore be designed in layers. First, loud and quiet functions should be separated. Next, the direct path of sound transmission should be limited. Only then should materials, screens and furniture be selected to reduce reverberation and improve local comfort.
Steelcase points out that an effective open-plan office should provide a variety of spaces supporting concentration, collaboration, learning, social interaction and regeneration. A uniform space without boundaries rarely serves all these activities well at the same time.
Silence is therefore not a feature of a single product. It is the result of several consistent design decisions.
Focus does not always mean complete isolation
Some employees concentrate best in complete silence. Others need a light sense of the team’s presence – the feeling that they are still part of a shared space without being exposed to every movement and every conversation.
An office should therefore offer more than one type of focus setting. A hierarchy of privacy is useful.
The first level may consist of workstations shielded from circulation routes. The second may include semi-enclosed places for individual work, reducing visual stimuli and some sound. The third may consist of small enclosed spaces intended for confidential conversations, online meetings and tasks requiring maximum separation.
This type of arrangement allows users to choose a place suited to the task rather than occupy a large meeting room simply to work alone for an hour. Gensler has also identified this as a genuine workplace problem: employees use meeting rooms for individual work when suitable focus spaces are unavailable, reducing the number of rooms accessible to teams.
A well-designed focus zone does not compete with the meeting room. It protects it from being used for the wrong purpose.
A focus zone needs its own rules
Even the best-designed space will fail if the organisation does not establish simple rules for using it.
Are online calls allowed? Is the space intended for short periods of work, or can someone occupy it for half a day? Does it require booking? Is entering the zone itself a signal that the user should not be disturbed, or are additional signs needed?
There is no need to create a multi-page policy. A clear function and consistent use are enough. If spontaneous meetings regularly take place inside the focus zone, its name will quickly become an empty declaration.
The design should therefore include not only furniture, but also a usage scenario. An architect can create conditions for concentration, but the organisational culture must respect them afterwards.
Fewer places, better matched
Focus zones should not be treated as the leftover space remaining after desks and meeting rooms have been arranged. In many contemporary offices, concentration is one of the most important activities carried out on-site. Gensler indicates that the ability to focus on work remains one of the main reasons employees come to the office.
This changes how office space should be considered.
Perhaps the workplace does not need another row of desks. Perhaps greater value would come from several well-positioned places where employees can move for the duration of a demanding task. Perhaps one large conference room should give way to several smaller spaces supporting focus, online conversations and two-person meetings.
Efficiency does not mean occupying every square metre. It means ensuring that every square metre reflects the way people actually work.
Where can people finally concentrate in an open-plan office?
Where concentration is treated as a full workplace function rather than an individual employee’s problem.
In a place away from the main flow of movement. Shielded from conversations and visual stimuli. Equipped according to the duration and nature of the work. Accessible without a complicated booking process. Clear and understandable to other users.
Focus zone design does not require placing the entire office behind closed doors. It does, however, require moving away from the belief that openness means the absence of boundaries. A well-positioned boundary does not weaken collaboration. It allows someone to step away from it for a while, complete work that requires attention and return to the team with a solution.
That is when the open-plan office begins to function not only as a place for meetings, but as a complete working environment.
FAQ
What is focus zone design?
Focus zone design involves creating places within an office that are intended for work requiring concentration. These zones reduce noise, movement within the field of vision and unexpected interruptions, while remaining easy to access for users of an open-plan office.
Where should a focus zone be located in an open-plan office?
Ideally, it should be positioned away from main circulation routes, kitchens, printers, reception areas and heavily used collaboration zones. The location should be quiet without being completely isolated from the team’s workstations.
Does a focus zone need to be an enclosed room?
No. For many tasks, a semi-enclosed place providing visual shielding and partial noise reduction is sufficient. Enclosed rooms are needed primarily for confidential conversations, online meetings and work requiring a very high level of concentration.
What furniture helps create a focus zone?
Useful solutions include upholstered acoustic screens, high-backed seating, modules forming semi-enclosed layouts and ergonomic workstations. KLEIBER QUIET screens make it possible to create calmer areas within open spaces without building permanent walls.
How many focus zones should an office have?
There is no single number suitable for every organisation. It depends on the size of the team, the nature of the work, the number of online meetings and the way the office is used. User observation and an analysis of how often employees occupy meeting rooms for individual work should form the basis of the decision.
Are headphones enough for focused work?
Headphones can reduce some sounds, but they do not remove visual stimuli, movement or unexpected interruptions. They do not replace a space designed for concentration. They should be an option, not the only way of coping with a poorly designed open-plan office.
Why are focus zones important in hybrid work?
A hybrid office supports many activities throughout the day: meetings, online conversations, collaboration and individual work. Focus zones allow users to change location depending on the task, so the open-plan area does not need to serve every purpose at the same time.
