In Magnor, Noway, “the world’s most environmentally friendly furniture factory” sits in the midst of a forest. Designed by BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group for Vestre, a Norwegian manufacturer of urban furniture, The Plus is a new typology of furniture factory. The Plus is a production facility, experience centre, and 300-acre public park all rolled into one, providing a veritable translation of logistics into architecture.

A building that is sustainable, efficient, and fun

Spread across 7,000 square metres, The Plus consists of four production zones arranged around a central courtyard and experience centre. These production zones are the colour factory, wood factory, assembly department, and warehouse. Designed in the shape of a plus sign (hence the factory’s name), this layout ensures an efficient workflow while providing each of the factory’s four wings with forest views.

Constructed in just 18 months, the building is made of locally sourced mass timber, low-carbon concrete, and 100 percent recycled reinforcement steel. The trees felled to clear a site for The Plus were used in its construction. The excavated forest floor was used on the building’s green roofs and in surrounding areas. The Plus has achieved a BREEAM Outstanding rating, recognising the building as an international innovator.

“Together with Vestre, we have imagined a factory that puts the entire process of furniture-making on open display. Vestre wants to show and share its knowledge, helping to accelerate the global transition towards sustainable manufacturing,” says Bjarke Ingels, founder of BIG. “The Plus is a crystal-clear example of ‘Hedonistic Sustainability’, showcasing how a sustainable future will not only be better for the environment, but also more beautiful to work in and fun to visit.”

Mass timber construction and colourful wayfinding

All four production wings are constructed using 24-metre, free-spanning glulam, which allows for flexible column-free spaces. Roofs, walls, and floors are constructed using cross-laminated timber (CLT). A 3-metre-wide braced service corridor houses the technical infrastructure and provides structural stability for each wing.

Vestre’s RAL colours are used to coat each factory machine, adding a playful touch throughout. These colours spill onto the floor areas and assist with wayfinding. “With this visual reference, it is easy to identify, trace, and explain the workflow. [We] want to create a new perception of what manufacturing looks like and, as part of that, the colours are intended to be particularly appealing to children,” says Vestre.

The building is clad with charred larch timber, ensuring it is almost maintenance-free and fire- and fungal-retardant. The Plus has over 2,000 square metres of specially developed glass facades, up to 14 metres in height, ensuring maximum transparency and minimising energy consumption.

Everyone is welcome

The factory’s central hub encircles a public, circular courtyard, where Vestre’s latest furniture collections are displayed and updated to reflect the changing seasons. From the factory floor, a staircase leads visitors and employees up to the 360-degree experience centre and a logistics office.

Each wing of the factory features an alternating ceiling corner, lifted to create inclined roofs that offer views into the production halls and the forest outside. Two of these sloping roofs extend to form a pathway for visitors and staff, along the colour factory and wood factory wings. 

Visitors and staff are invited to hike around the facility, ending their walk on the green roof terrace. An accessible ramp enables wheelchair users and children in pushchairs to enjoy the serpentine pathway, surrounded by pine trees on all sides.

The area surrounding the factory is open to the general public. From Vestre’s viewpoint, The Plus is a tribute to Norway's traditional “right to roam”.

Through this project, Vestre aims to demonstrate that industrial projects can also be global innovators in the environmental field.

The Plus has been designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) in Copenhagen, Denmark. Together, Vestre and BIG have created an entirely new typology, where people, production, technology, architecture, and nature are completely integrated with each other.

The Plus is conceived as the direct translation of logistics into architecture. The four production areas – the colour factory, the wood factory, the assembly department, and the warehouse – are arrayed around a central courtyard that forms the very heart of the building. The geometry provides an open and efficient workflow, while allowing all four wings of the factory to be in direct contact with the forest. At the centre of the building lies the experience centre, which provides 360-degree views of the whole production process.

Because the junction between the factory’s four wings needs to accommodate all production-related traffic smoothly and efficiently, it has been designed in the shape of an indoor roundabout. This leaves space for an open-air central courtyard where Vestre can showcase our latest furniture collections through every season of the year. A staircase, resplendent in all Vestre’s 200 standard colours, leads visitors and employees up to the experience centre and office. By cleverly raising one corner of each wing of the factory, the architects have created a view from the roof that alternates between the forest canopy and the production halls.

Through its furniture, Vestre creates meeting places where people can come together, and what we are actually doing with The Plus at Magnor is creating a vast new meeting place. The factory roof will be open to the public all year round – easily accessible via ramps and stairs. The sloping roof will enable visitors to walk up the length of the building-while watching the production processes taking place inside. This allows for maximum transparency. Those who are even more curious can visit the experience centre at The Plus and take a closer look at the factory from the inside. The footpaths continue down to the ground on the other side of the building, where they transform into forest trails that meander through the wood, and form a colourful route through the park and on to Magnor town centre.

The view from the roof shows how the factory's propeller-like wings form a reciprocal system that creates not only a logistical hub, but a structural nexus. The four wings will have a 21-metre, free-spanning gluelam frame construction. A 3-metre-wide braced service corridor will house the technical infrastructure and provide structural stability for each wing. Ducts in the factory floor will allow power, compressed air, and ventilation to be routed to the relevant machinery, ensuring that as much of thise infrastructure as possible is hidden away.

To add a sense of playfulness to the factory, each machine is coated in one of Vestre's RAL colours, which spill out over the floor to create an archipelago of colours that links back to the central roundabout. Since each factory wing has its own colour code, this mapping of the machinery provides an orientation system in an otherwise completely symmetrical space. With this visual reference, it is easy to identify, trace and explain the workflow. Vestre wants to create a new perception of what manufacturing looks like and, as part of that, the colours are intended to be particularly appealing to children.

The Plus is truly a factory in the forest. Great efforts will be made to keep the trees as close to the building as possible. The building will be clad in charred timber, cut from the same trees that were felled to make way for the factory. This is also a subtle reference to local history. The first immigrants who came to Magnor from Finland in the 17th century were known for their productive slash-and-burn agriculture. Portions of the forest were burned down, and grain sown in the ashes.