Rethinking, reusing and reinventing stand design

At last year’s Stockholm Furniture Fair, Vestre was awarded “Best Stand” for our commitment to sustainability and our reusable stand design. The stand was designed by the Swedish Note Design Studio. This year, we repeated our success with them at Milan Design Week, while of course reusing materials from last year’s stand.

At Vestre, we attach great importance to sustainability initiatives, while also striving for full transparency at all levels. At last year’s Stockholm Furniture fair, we let the stand reflect our commitment to the environment and calculated and displayed the carbon footprint for all our furniture. In addition to this, all materials used in the stand were carefully selected for their ease of recycling and reuse, like hollow brick, pine plywood and stone.

The assignment given to Note Design Studio for the design of the stand for this year's Salone del Mobile was therefore crystal clear: reuse as much material as possible from last year's fair in Stockholm. It was the perfect partnership, as Note Design Studio and Vestre share a vision of encouraging and enabling design as a tool for positive change.

Reuse and reinvent

Recycling of the materials used in the stand truly reflects the circular thinking and the long-term sustainability that characterizes everything we do. The stand also showcases our latest major projects and product innovations.

Among other things, visitors gained an insight into our new factory The Plus. The Plus is the world's most environmentally friendly furniture factory, and is being built in Magnor, Norway. The factory, designed by the world-famous architectural firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), will be the Nordic region's first industrial building to be awarded the highest environmental classification, BREEAM Outstanding, and will act as a global showcase for sustainable and highly efficient furniture manufacturing

Vestre Habitatsstrengthening biodiversity

This year’s stand also showcased another new project called Vestre Habitats which is a response to the rapidly declining biodiversity in the world. Vestre Habitats has been developed in closed collaboration with René Hougaard, the designer and architect behind the Arde design studio, and Rethink Studio's design manager Alexander Qual.

“Vestre Habitats is our response to a necessary change and a way of making us aware of the need for greater biodiversity in our neighbourhoods and cities. Biodiversity underpins ecosystem functions that are essential for human health and well-being. Growing urbanization is a threat to both human health and biodiversity, and Vestre’s mission is to outline a scenario where coexistence in sustainable habitats for all species is possible,” says Jan Christian Vestre, CEO of Vestre.

Vestre Habitats also inspired Note Design Studio to develop the new stand concept which challenges the design of both architecture and products to promote biodiversity in urban spaces. The concept creates a spatial and immersive experience that both shows the key products and communicates our visions as well as the UN's global sustainability goals. With an expressive, yet simple architecture, it creates a dialogue between the old and the new, exterior and interior, andmost importantlybetween humans and nature.

“We believe in transparency by making our methods visible and in always striving to minimize our environmental footprint. And we want to showcase our daily commitment to this work in our stand at Salone del Mobile”, says Jan Christian Vestre.