The Journey
When meeting with ETPCU, it became clear that one of their main priorities was their employees. Currently, the credit union is expanding and growing at a rapid rate, with more growth predicted in the future. Fundamentally, they needed this new headquarters to house their growing staff now and for years to come. NewGround purposefully designed the space to allow for a 15-year growth plan, with lots of vacancies and office space to be filled at later times.
Another part of employee culture kept in mind was the inclusion of collaborative spaces. These spaces ranged from larger boardrooms to outdoor access with hook-ups for grills. One room in particular, while normally divided for boardrooms and meeting spaces, can be opened up by taking down temporary walls to allow for large employee gatherings and celebrations. This space even includes an adjacent kitchen and overhang seating for employees so that everyone can feel included when meeting in a large space at once.
Nature and the great outdoors are pivotal themes within ETPCU. While the employees are working indoors, the feel of the outdoors needed to remain a consistent theme throughout the facility. To accomplish this, NewGround’s designers got to work making a magnetic and engaging space perfectly in-tune with the nature surrounding it. This included overlaying several different types of wood, green coloring and tones, images and themes of forests and trees, and textures that made the entire headquarters feel like a living embodiment of East Texas.
Environmental graphics also played a key role, as they served to engage the employees in the history of ETPCU. One such environmental graphic had a large map of the area with stars placed to indicate the location of each of ETPCU’s branches. To accommodate future growth, the designers made this graphic magnetic, so future stars could be added to areas of the map to represent new branches. They also created a history wall with photos on a timeline that represents pictures being added to a shelf. This celebrates the history of ETPCU and the community surrounding it.
