Made from the walls it replaced
At BRE’s Science Park Building 17, the reception counter was built from the building itself. The timber slats across the front came from stud walls taken out during the strip-out.
The base came from tambour storage units nobody needed any more. We cut them in half, so their plinth and wheels became the counter’s own base. It can still be moved, so the reception can be reconfigured or cleared for an event without anyone rebuilding it.
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What it did for the project
The counter was one part of a scheme that reworked 240 items of existing furniture, saving £29,930 and 7.44 tonnes of CO2e, with 22.68 tonnes kept out of landfill and nothing sent to it.
The building, designed with Feilden Clegg Bradley, achieved BREEAM Excellent.
When new is the right answer
Sometimes there is nothing worth keeping, or the space is new. Buying new can still be the sustainable choice, if you know who made it and how.
Before we work with any new supplier, they complete a 45-question audit built from ISO 9001, EcoVadis and FISP. It asks whether they pay the Real Living Wage, hold ISO 14001, have calculated their Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions and set a net zero year.
For the product itself, it asks for FSC or PEFC timber with chain of custody on the invoice, Environmental Product Declarations, VOC testing, the glues and foams used, and whether plastic parts over 50g are marked so they can be recycled. We are audited on the same things ourselves, and hold EcoVadis Platinum.
Built to come apart
Ska Rating 2.0 now requires furniture to be designed for disassembly. For a reception desk that means modular construction, joined mechanically rather than glued, so it can be extended, reconfigured, or taken apart and recycled.
On a recent proposal for a professional services firm, five of the six desks we offered were modular: high and low, straight and curved, left or right handed. The sixth was a slatted desk on a steel frame, the BRE look bought new.
What a reception desk has to do
It has to work before it does anything else. A lowered section lets a wheelchair user be greeted face to face, as BS 8300-2 sets out and our inclusive design work covers.
Power and data need routes that keep cables off the worktop, and some buildings need a screen between visitor and staff.
Start with what is already there
Tell us what the reception looks like now and what it needs to do, and we will tell you which of these fits. If something in the building can be reworked, we will find it first.
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