Gary Wheeler, Director of Wheeler Kanik

Gary Wheeler: 'That's where we've put thought into team building. You need the right combination. We find we can't have five extroverts on a team. You'll get nowhere. It's not typecasting people but learning how they take information. It's the same with clients.

A lawyer is not going to take design speak well. It has to be logical and linear. I change my behaviour or the team changes its behaviour to suit the needs of the client.

'Was it designers or office managers that started open plan? It was managers trying to reduce space. Well, they found they can't just take away space. You have to give more back.

We have to have five or six [different] places to work...Acoustics is an enabler to make things work better, if we manage it. It has such a huge impact but we're losing that through using lots of hard surfaces.'

Angela Jeng, John Robertson Architects Associate

Simon Jackson, Aedas Interiors: 'It's interesting that, on acoustics, for a new theatre, there would be so much research [to ensure they got it right]. But for an office, very rarely does that happen, because of the speed of fit-out, and the approach being more cosmetic. But more and more you need to get the behavioural and anthropological side into the mix. You need to look at difference in age, demographics. The ageing population is going to be much larger than the younger. How do you get a 25-yearold working with 55-year-old?'

Giles Martin, Wilkinson Eyre: 'I want to say something about POE, and when people say acoustics is something they are least happy with. When you come into a big space you're going to lease or rent, acoustics is something you don't really notice. You see the beautiful view, the river. Not surprisingly when you put 200 people in there you find acoustics is a problem. It probably wasn't a problem 50 or 100 years ago. We weren't all working in these big barns. What's really changed is these big offices, with a 4,000 sq m floorplate. It's so specifically designed to have flexibility... but it's actually a very restrictive space and you have to be very creative with it to turn it into something people can fit into. What's really strange now is we're starting to knock them down: 25-year-old buildings in Broadgate, we're knocking them down. Acoustics is on the edge of this problem but it's symptomatic. The real problem is with these huge offices: we've been tricked into thinking they've got to be like this, but it's not the case.'

Shane Kelly, TP Bennett Design Director

Nick Pell: 'They're designed to return an investment for a pension fund that's bought the building. The architecture of office building peaked about 25 years ago. That formula still exists for some influential people. The idea that you need music to cover white noise says it all.'

Giles Martin: 'They are more like factories than offices. In Victorian times, you'd have 500 children making sheets in a factory. It's more like that. What's odd is we weren't meant to have 500 people in a room. It's not a conducive environment for people.'

Phil Hutchinson: 'There's an ideal number of people: 40 is the tipping point. With 40, you can know everyone's name. There's a parallel there with space. If you are talking about these larger floorplates, it removes all the humanity from the space. Work space is about collaboration.'

Nick Pell: 'We're back to the importance of being able to choose where to go. We have a slide we like to use, which shows battery hens and free-range chickens. In a battery-hen situation it's a factory. With free range you might have less output, but it's of far better quality.'

Simon Jackson, Director of Aedas Interiors