Orfield Laboratories

The ivy turns, our deep belief in this work continues, and new things lie ahead— wishing peace to all in this season of beauty and change.

Emma Orfield Johnston and Steven Orfield

As we approach Fall, we’re revisiting one of our favorite stories from last year.

HuffPost captured the rare collaboration between founder Steven Orfield and granddaughter Emma Orfield Johnston — a partnership that blends a half century of multi-sensory research with therapeutics.

When you step into our laboratory, it is our goal to, during that time, make you feel part of our family.

Written by Monica Torres
Photographs by Caroline Yang

Revisit the article at the link in our bio.

Announcement: A federally approved study on the potential of silence and darkness to treat PTSD in veterans!

We are thrilled to share that our lab just received federal approval for a groundbreaking new study on treating PTSD in veterans — in collaboration with the Minneapolis Veterans Home and UMN Medical School.

The study will take place in the Quietest Place on Earth, our anechoic chamber — and will be the first of its kind in the world.

Veterans carry burdens few can see. We believe silence and darkness may help lighten the weight.

More to come!

Steven Orfield founded Orfield Laboratories, Inc. in 1971, following a formative academic path in the philosophy of science at the University of Minnesota, an intensive focus on human perceptual research in the context of furniture and office design, and a striking realization: his interdisciplinary expertise made him virtually unemployable within traditional systems.

In our feature for , quotes Steve and writes:

“My whole life has been dramatically impacted by my philosophy education,” he says. His first business, Orfield Associates, was a sales-rep
firm slinging “the modern open office”—high-end European-designed cubicles. He began to chafe at the way these systems would be implemented
in American offices. He started buying expensive measuring equipment so he could optimize the lighting and the acoustics so these office systems were actually usable. Along the way, he basically
invented his own field—architectural consulting. “It goes back to philosophy,” he says. “I found fairly quickly that lighting was for the physiological and psychological benefit for the user.” Acoustics was the same. “We didn’t optimize acoustics just to quiet the office,” he says. “We created speech privacy so people could function in the office.”

Photograph by

Two years ago, Emma Orfield began to develop a practice of sitting in their anechoic chamber, “The Quietest Place on Earth,” for consistent periods of silence and darkness. from writes:

“The chamber’s potential may have found her because she’s the only Orfield, and maybe the only person in the world, to have regularly spent time immersed in its particularly profound levels of silence and darkness. “I’ve been meditating for a long time,” she says. “But as somebody that struggles with visual and auditory processing issues, it’s not always easy to get into a meditative state.” In 2023, she realized the quietest place in the world was more conducive to getting to that meditative state. “From then on,” she says, “I’ve had a very spiritual feeling about the chamber.”

[Read the article and book a session via the link in our bio]

There is a common misconception that the mind teaches the body, yet in reality, it is the body that teaches the mind…

Our clients’ experiences differ based on their hearing threshold and what they’re carrying emotionally (or physically) as they enter the space.

In environments stripped of stimulus, the brain is relieved of its usual roles: filtering, defending, interpreting.

Photograph by for our recent feature in (article link in bio)

In the 1980s, we acquired our anechoic chamber from the Sunbeam Corporation, following the sudden decision to close their Chicago facility and offshore their research to Japan.

This photograph by for our recent feature in features the original sound console that came with the chamber, which remains as a spectacle at our lab in studio 2.

Emma Orfield Johnston and Steven Orfield, photographed by for recent feature, “Turn Down the Noise.”

The article traces our lab’s specialty in design research and consulting, and introduces its future—centered on therapeutic applications of perceptual silence.

We’re beginning to share reflections from those who have stepped into this space.

“For the first time in my conscious life, I did not think or feel anything for an hour…”

Private and public sessions are now available. [Booking link in bio]