Overview of telephone and meeting boxes
The Phone Booth Guide - Part 1
Nowadays, telephone boxes and meeting boxes are all the rage in offices! No wonder: even though most of us now work a lot from the office again, the number of video conferences has not decreased.
With telephone and meeting boxes, open-plan offices can be adapted to the new requirements for sound insulation and privacy in no time at all - and without renovation or conversion costs.
But which telephone or meeting box is the right one for your office? Based on the questions from many customer discussions, we have developed this small telephone box and meeting box guide to help you decide and orientate yourself.
The overview
The essential criteria that can be used to structure meeting and telephone boxes are
- the number of people who should be accommodated in the box
- the question of whether to work sitting or standing in the box.
This allows the following overview graphic to be created:
The simplest case: The 1 telephone box (standing)
Telephone boxes are about the size of a phone box from the 1990s. Thanks to the sound insulation, one person can make a phone call or attend a video conference in peace and quiet on a floor area of approx. 1 square metre. In addition, almost all models have a narrow table at standing height and, if necessary, a matching stool. Lighting and ventilation are integrated and are usually controlled automatically via a motion sensor.
Telephone boxes for one person are by far the most requested boxes and offer a very good price-performance ratio due to their compactness.
Concentrated work while sitting at a real table is not possible in the one-square-metre models for reasons of space.
Also popular: Meeting boxes (4 people)
If more than one person is to be seated in the box, most companies opt directly for a 4-person meeting box. Meeting boxes for 4 people require approx. 3-4 square metres of floor space and are usually equipped with two benches and a table in the middle, so that up to four people can sit opposite each other and talk without being disturbed by ambient noise or, conversely, preventing their immediate neighbours from concentrating on their work.
In the popularity scale, the meeting boxes for 4 people are directly in second place behind the 1-person telephone boxes. This is due to the good price-performance ratio, especially if you compare this with, for example, 2-person boxes.
All other telephone and meeting boxes
There are numerous other variants of meeting boxes, but they usually differ "only" in terms of interior design. In other words, they usually have the same floor space as a 4-person meeting box, with the difference that the furniture in the interior is designed for two people (see matrix illustration). In terms of price, however, it makes little difference whether the meeting box is equipped for 2 or 4 people. Therefore, the choice usually falls on a 4-person meeting box, because this offers the most flexible possibilities of use. This is why we usually recommend this variant to our customers.
However, a special configuration or special forms deviating from this make sense in the following cases:
- Two people should be able to participate in video conferences while sitting at an optimal angle. In this case, the second bench is omitted and instead a monitor with video camera is mounted on this side of the meeting box. These models, labelled "video lounge" or similar, represent a very professional setting for video conferencing. This investment can make sense if no separate meeting room is available for important customer presentations and the "4-person box with laptop on the table" variant is not professional enough.
- Another scenario: Sometimes the available space is not sufficient for a 4-person box. In this case, models for 2 people can be interesting, where people can work standing up or sitting on stools. This reduces the required floor space to about 2 square metres.
- Another possibility: a protected space is needed in which a person can work for a longer period of time in a concentrated manner and under ergonomic conditions. Solo boxes are intended for this application, in which there is room for an office swivel chair and a built-in table. For this, approx. 1.5 square metres of floor space must be allowed (see for example Cube S from SEDUS).
There are hardly any upper limits to the meeting boxes: The range goes from 6, 8 or XL variants to room-in-room systems in which individual modules can be lined up almost endlessly...
Conclusion
It is not without reason that the 1-section telephone boxes (standing) and the 4-section meeting boxes are among the best sellers. In both cases, there is a good price-performance ratio with good use of space.
Special forms, such as boxes of 2, should only be considered if there are solid reasons for doing so.
Part 2
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