Make better environmental choices for your projects with this year’s inspiration book from Vestre
Vestre wants to create caring meeting places. By this we mean meeting places developed to look after both people and the environment. This work is now more important than ever and is therefore also the concept for this year’s inspiration book and product catalogue.
In this catalogue, we have brought together exciting projects involving caring meeting places from all around the world, as well as all our products, solutions and prices. In order to create sustainable and inclusive public spaces, accurate and readily accessible information is essential in making the best choices for projects. That’s why we’ve created the world’s first product catalogue with EPD values across the whole portfolio - an overview of the environmental footprint of all the furniture, from raw materials to the finished product.
A catalogue for inspiration and reference
With this book, we hope to both inspire and inform. The award-winning graphic design agency TANK is behind the design of the catalogue, which is their sixth book for Vestre. In addition to information on the environmental footprints of all the products, this year’s catalogue has an even stronger focus on showcasing projects. It includes projects from as many as 27 cities around the world, from Oslo to Los Angeles, which we hope will inspire new caring meeting places.
“Unlike in previous catalogues which have been sorted according to the products, the focus this year has been on showcasing projects. Drone photography has been an important tool in achieving this. With these photos, we can talk about the landscape project itself to an even greater extent, how it has been planned and how Vestre’s products have been used in the project,” explains Ina Brantenberg, Creative Director and Partner at Tank.
It is still easy to get an overview of all the products. There is an entire chapter dedicated to this at the beginning of the catalogue. On these pages, you can quickly look up the different series and all the products they contain.
“That way you get the best of both worlds. A presentation of the product itself, its form and design, as well as the part of the project where you can see how the product is used in an urban setting,” says Brantenberg.
Promoting community more important than ever
Creating places where people can meet in public, especially outdoors, has become more important than ever. Public spaces, back gardens and roof terraces have become our homes away from home, particularly over the past year. The challenges of polarisation and hostility also help emphasise the need for and highlight the importance of spaces where we can meet in spite of our differences and talk to each other, get to know and understand each other.
“Vestre wants to bring people together. In a world that is becoming ever more polarised, where differences and disparities are growing and the level of conflict is rising, trust is crumbling between people in some places. By designing more inclusive meeting places where people can come together, get to know each other and share life experiences and stories, we create less conflict and more of what binds us together,” explains Jan Christian Vestre, CEO of Vestre.
Vestre creates good design - and good design encourages people to spend time together in urban spaces. Caring meeting places have an impact and a significance, and we have seen this happen time after time. We can see it, for example, in the Milan project ‘Spoleto-Venini’ by architects Bloomberg Associates, a project given special attention in this year’s catalogue. A busy major crossroads was transformed into a popular meeting place for local people of all ages. Surveys have been conducted on the project’s success, and the number of people spending time in the space has also been monitored.
“We are interested in proving what is said. You can talk big, but if you can show that it works, that makes a bigger impact. All the responses show that this has been an enormously popular and long-awaited meeting place - an example to emulate,” says Brantenberg.
Using drone photography, we were able to count the number of people that spent time here at different times over a weekend day. The results showed that it was a popular meeting place, attracting visitors from early in the morning to late in the evening. At the end of the working day, at 16:28, there were 105 people there. Different generations meet here, whether it’s older people wanting to take a break or young families letting their children run around freely and play.
Cover of this year’s catalogue. The project in Milan has also inspired the cover and the graphic elements that are repeated throughout the catalogue. When the number of visitors in a day was recorded, it showed 16 people in the space at 10:26, which the punched holes on the cover symbolise.
Product news from an all-star team of designers
In the catalogue, you will of course find information on all the news from this year, and we are proud to have top-tier designers on the team. Behind the new designs are well-known names such as Andreas Engesvik and Jonas Ravlo Stokke, Note Design Studio and the trio Espen Voll, Tore Borgersen and Michael Olofsson.
This year’s theme ‘caring meeting places’ is also reflected in the new designs. An example is Note Design Studio’s ‘Plinth’ series. People from different cultural backgrounds meet in city parks. The Swedish studio studied how people gathered together for meals. The result was a series of tables and benches with three different heights and two lengths.
The world’s first product catalogue with EPD values for the whole portfolio
The catalogue includes a separate section on Vestre, where you can learn more about areas such as our production, materials and values. We work actively with nine of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals and our approach to these goals is described in detail throughout the catalogue - because we hope more people will be inspired and follow in our footsteps.
A key aspect of this sustainability work is transparency and strengthening peoples’ ability to make greener choices. For customers to be able to choose more greenly, it is up to us as suppliers to make this possible. Vestre therefore believes it is crucial for information about products’ impact on the climate to be readily accessible, so that it is actually easier to make the best choice for projects. That's why we’re the world’s first furniture manufacturer to add EPD values beside each product on the price list in this year’s catalogue.
These EPD values give a simple representation of the product’s environmental footprint from raw materials to finished product. If more manufacturers and suppliers open up and make this information accessible, it will be easier for the customer to compare products and make the best choices for the environment. You can read more about EPDs, why they are important and how to use them here.
“Vestre wants complete openness. By having Environmental Product Declarations (EPD values) for all of our products, we enable customers to make choices based not only on price, but also on the products’ environmental footprint. The Nordic Ecolabel is a quality assurance that these products are environmentally friendly, and the EPD values complement this by also giving the customers the opportunity to separate products in a product portfolio,” explains Øyvind Bjørnstad, Head of Sustainability at Vestre.
Printed at Nordic Ecolabelled printing house in Norway
Ina Brantenberg visiting printing house RKG during the printing of this year’s catalogue.
The catalogue is locally sourced and printed at Nordic Ecolabelled printing house RKG in Oslo. Two different types of environmentally friendly paper have been used. The cover is made from 100% recycled cardboard and the inside is made from a Swedish paper, Munken Pure, which is both locally sourced and has every possible environmental certification.
The catalogue is available in six different languages. You can download the digital PDF version here, or order a printed copy here. We hope it will inspire new caring meeting places and a desire to save the world. Little by little.
