in the maid-1980s, aetna undertook a major renovation project for over 1 million ft2 (93,000 m) of office space in its headquarters. large areas of open-plan offices were developed, allowing the possibility of testing different configuration and materials to offer the best design in terms of speech privacy. ln this direction a mock-up area was built, in which these different configurations could be evaluable guidelines for open-plan office design.