WR Meadows Innovation Center

A family company founded in 1926 in Elgin, Illinois, W. R. MEADOWS, INC. (WRM) designs, manufactures, and markets high quality building materials for today’s construction professionals. An existing building directly adjacent to the company’s corporate headquarters and main manufacturing plant became available and WRM purchased it for their new Innovation Center. The team worked alongside the client to recognize and celebrate the company’s past and strengthen the WR Meadows brand throughout the design. The materials used incorporate WR Meadows’ passion for sustainability using literal green and biophilic green elements balanced with the use of metal accents to represent their iconic knight in armor logo. Signage and graphics of the company’s history highlight the manufacturer’s beginnings with images of their first building, labs, and their founding family members whose legacy still guides the company today. This completely renovated facility includes research and development laboratories, a training and demonstration center, offices, and warehouse space. It was critical to this client to provide safe and modernized space for their chemists, as previously they did all their materials development in a single lab. Now WRM has a stand-alone facility for research and development of next generation building materials in five large state-of-the-art laboratories. In addition, the training and demonstration center provides much needed space for educating their sales staff, architects, engineers, and construction partners.