Loud corner, quiet corner: why good spaces have both

Imagine a house with only one room. You cook, you sleep, you hold a meeting, and you try to read in the same four walls. It would not work, and nobody would call that a house.

Workspaces are the same. A space with only quiet is a library, wonderful for reading but awkward for calls. A space with only noise is a market, wonderful for chatter but hopeless for deep thinking. The good ones have both.

The loud corner

The loud corner is where things are allowed to happen. A video call gets taken. A quick brainstorm gets said out loud. Someone laughs at a message and reads it to the person next to them.

Loud does not mean rude. It means the sound has somewhere to go. When there is a place for talking, nobody has to whisper into their phone in a stairwell.

A meeting cabin with a video-conferencing set-up is a proper loud corner: a door that closes, a screen for the call, and no need to apologise to the whole room for your voice.

The quiet corner

The quiet corner is where the hard thinking happens. The writing. The numbers. The long difficult email you have been avoiding since Monday.

You do not need absolute silence. You need the feeling that nobody is going to speak to you in the next hour, and that if you look up, other people are also quietly busy. That is a different kind of silence, and a surprisingly friendly one.

Quiet works best when it is shared. Nobody wants to be silent alone.

Choosing your corner for the day

Some practical thoughts.

Match the corner to the task. Writing or analysis goes quiet. Calls and planning go loud. It sounds obvious, but many of us pick a seat by habit and then suffer for it.

Change corners mid-day. A heavy morning in the quiet corner, then a lighter afternoon nearer the chatter. Your energy will probably follow.

Warn people kindly. If you need to take a call at your desk, a short “sorry, quick call” is enough. If you need quiet, headphones are a polite way to say so.

Be a good neighbour. Keep your phone on silent, and lower your voice when you can. The quiet corner depends on everyone.

At Teapot Coworks, the workspace is air conditioned and calm, and there is a meeting cabin for the times you need your voice. Between the two, you can have a full day of work without moving house.

If you would like to find your corner, see how a desk works and come for a day.