A Neighbourhood Shaped by Community

Bergensmeieriet is the transformation of Tine's former dairy site at Mindemyren in Bergen into a car-free urban neighbourhood of around 600 apartments, shops, cafés and public spaces. Commissioned by the developer Bonava, Nonspace created the placemaking platform that would give the new district its identity, story and sense of community, long before ground was broken.

The zoning plan had been approved by a unanimous city council in 2022, praised for its architectural quality. But a plan is not a neighbourhood. The dairy had moved out, the site stood empty, and Bonava had to sell homes in a district that did not yet exist.

The challenge was to create belonging to a place without residents: an identity that could carry half a century of industrial history into a new era, engage neighbours, buyers and local business, and build momentum towards the planned sales launch in autumn 2023.

Nonspace treated placemaking as open branding: a place's identity is common property, and the process must invite in the people who will own it. The approach draws on Nonspace's thinking on destination branding.

An insight phase defined three persona categories, mapping channels, lifestyle and motivation for each. The brand story was drawn from the site’s authentic past, where milk from the farms around the region became the flavours on the city’s kitchen tables, and carried into the future: from milk churns to milk in your coffee. Everything was gathered under the concept “Et nabolag formet i fellesskap” (A neighbourhood shaped together).

The platform was completed with a visual profile created for the place itself, not the developer: a distinct expression carrying the industrial heritage forward, built to work as the identity carrier across surfaces, from public space and sales material to digital channels.

The platform was delivered complete and production-ready to Bonava in May 2023, in time for the sales launch that autumn. Bonava AB went on to sell its entire Norwegian operation, and the work followed the project through two changes of ownership: UNION Residential Development's acquisition of Bonava Norge for NOK 1.5 billion in June 2023, and OBOS's purchase of Bergensmeieriet in January 2024.

Such is the nature of large urban developments: long timelines and shifting ownership decide what finally reaches the world. This case shows the value of bringing together the ambitions and possibilities of an urban development, so that they carry through the turbulence of acquisitions and mergers. Today Bergensmeieriet is being developed by OBOS.

The activation and marketing work built on the platform is documented in its own case.