The New Mexico Consortium is a non-profit corporation, formed when three New Mexican Research Universities came together with a passion for and dedication to advanced scientific research and education. These universities moved into a facility where they joined their highly specialized research capabilities to create an innovative research collaboration. The only thing left to do was design the perfect workplace to suit their specialized needs.
EthoSource, LLC , based out of Morgantown, PA, provides customized pre-owned office furniture solutions across the nation, which caught the eye of the New Mexico Consortium as just what they were looking for to create a work environment that their work and research required.
The impressive facility is a brand new building located in Los Alamos Research Park (LARP). Dr. Stephen Buelow served as NMC’s main point of contact for the job, establishing a close working relationship with Tom Brooks, EthoSource’s Sales Rep on the project, and the rest of the EthoSource team. As manager of laboratory research, education programs, and related facilities, Buelow helped EthoSource identify the goals of the group at their Plant Biology location. “Our Plant Biology initiative performs basic research with impacts on sustainable energy, food security and climate induced ecological change,” Buelow said. With these goals in mind, Brooks connected Dr. Buelow with EthoSource’s professional design and project management team as they began to specify what the project required and continue to configure a design that worked with their objectives and space. They wanted their workspace to demonstrate something reused and re-purposed to reflect their beliefs and work. EthoSource’s pre-owned inventory can be refurbished to the customized requests of the customer, which allowed the NMC to coordinate their sustainability principles with the quality look they wanted for their modern research facility.
The final project resulted in a mix of fully refurbished Herman Miller Ethospace cubicles and new Cherryman casegoods. The refurbished cubicles featured new fabric, new mobile pedestals, and new surfaces that all captured the NMC’s desired look and feel. They also filled their offices with all new Argos task chairs with coordinating fabric and Match guest chairs.
After a week and a half installation of 34 stations, 10 private offices, and 100 chairs, EthoSource had transformed the New Mexico Consortium’s new facility into a modern, functional research workplace. The Consortium’s impressive new look has made it an extraordinary space for the joint collaboration between three universities to increase the impact of scientific education and research on the local and national scale.
EthoSource enjoyed working with the New Mexico Consortium on this project and were pleased to hear from Dr. Steve Buelow a few weeks after the project’s completion when he reached out to EthoSource saying, “Just to let you know we have had many tours of our facility. The last in included the U.S. Secretary of Energy, the Governor of New Mexico and our U.S. Congressman. Everyone has been impressed with your furniture. I mentioned that it is refurbished and they say it looks better than the new furniture they have installed. Our architects toured and liked what they saw, and said he would consider refurbished furniture for the remodel of their offices.”
Photo Credit: Patrick Coulie