Green Machine
In 2020, when BIG revealed its plans for The Plus, Vestre’s new furniture manufacturing hub just outside Oslo, it was instantly polarizing. Here was a “factory in the forest,” a seeming contradiction for a project also touted as the most sustainable of its kind in the world. Two years later, as you drive down the winding, tree-lined roads of Magnor, Norway, the anticipation builds — a flashy billboard even proclaims the arrival of what resembles a UFO, a foreign object just landed on a verdant site. The fuss seems more suited to a tourist attraction than an industrial building, but it’s also not particularly surprising: Jan Christian Vestre, then CEO, proudly declared in his initial pitch to the municipality that The Plus would be a recommended attraction on Tripadvisor.
As you pull up to the site, however, the building announces itself with a whisper. In reality, it is much more at one with its context than the renderings convey. Clad in charred wood, its facade fades into the background, disguising the structure among the rows of
