Orfield Laboratories

08/14/2025

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.

07/31/2025

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!

07/31/2025

07/15/2025

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

07/08/2025

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]

06/30/2025

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)

06/25/2025

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.

06/23/2025

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.

06/18/2025

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]

06/18/2025

06/17/2025

Additional sessions of silence and darkness are now open for private bookings of the Anechoic Experience and public bookings of Group Perceptual Silence…

For those who are drawn to deep quiet, sensory reset, and perceptual repair— appointments in our acoustic lab are now available at the link in our bio.

“Silence is not about what’s gone, it’s about what is left…”

06/16/2025

Reposted from

is home to the certified quietest place on Earth. It’s also where musicians have recorded music: Prince recorded a demo tape, Bob Dylan did Blood on the Tracks, and Cat Stevens made “Was Dog a Doughnut?” there. The lore surrounding it as a pioneering recording studio may have been what first brought The Roots drummer there, but he has since become an evangelist for Orfield Labs’ anechoic chamber. “Dude, I went in there expecting nothing, and it literally paradigm-shifted my entire life,” Questlove says.

Owner Steven Orfield and his granddaughter Emma Orfield Johnston are now pioneering the chamber with wellness retreat-style therapeutic sessions. Both agree that our society has never been more consumed by noise. “We’re addicted to it,” Steven Orfield says, “whether it’s our politics, our entertainment, or the screens on our phones.” In this way, has our society ever been more in need of quiet? Can the Orfield’s somehow bring their anechoic chamber to all of us? Read the full story at the link in bio.

Written by
Photographs by