The office’s unique point will be sustainability, and it will feature used furniture revived for a second life, long-lasting and easily renewed materials, plastic consumption will be drastically decreased, and food waste solutions are actively being considered.
The new Vinted office is due to open its doors in Naujamiestis, on the corner of Švitrigaila and Naugardukas streets in the newly opened spacious business centre Uptown Park. The roughly 9- thousand square-metre space will hold 900 workplaces which will be distributed over four floors. The office will also have two terraces, an internal yard, a gym, a café, spaces for rest, leisure, childcare and other purposes. There will be 127 different meeting and individual workrooms adapted to the nature of meetings and their goals.
According to project team lead Ieva Užkurienė, Vinted has been planning the move for some time already, as the decision is related to the company’s growth. Both currently and after moving to the new premises, Vinted staff can and will be able to choose to work remotely, but the need for high quality and sustainable office remains.
“Currently, Vinted employs around 450 professionals. However, we are constantly growing and intend to have around 600 colleagues by the end of this year. It is natural that we would not fit in our current office and so we sought new opportunities, which would allow us to not only continue expanding our team but would also keep our cohesion. Teamwork and seeking a common result, sharing responsibilities and victories, as well as transparency – these are our important values. Due to this, our new premises will have over a hundred meeting rooms, special open spaces for conversations with colleagues, while from the internal yard, the entire office will be visible and a wide spiral staircase will join all four floors,” Užkurienė says.
According to Užkurienė, Naujamiestis was also chosen due to its convenient commuting opportunities: “We are also monitoring this area’s growth prospects and would like to contribute to encouraging a sense of community here.”
The new office, used furniture
According to Užkurienė, when creating the office’s interior it was important to maintain a sense of community between the staff as well as variety, to adhere to the different needs of the team. However, sustainability became a no-less important aspect and this was sought both when choosing the building and interior solutions.
“While the building is inherently energy-efficient and provides energy savings because it is newly constructed, we wanted to view its furnishing responsibly as well. In its operations, Vinted encourages to make second-hand fashion marketplace items the first choice for consumers and we adhere to this rule ourselves, basing our office’s interior on it,” the company’s representative states.
The office will feature used furniture – the company will continue using 95 per cent of the furniture brought in from the old office, and most of the missing pieces were also obtained second-hand in-country: “When targeting sustainability in our office, we take a thorough approach, and so even the used furniture was bought here in Lithuania so that not only the furniture itself would be sustainable, but also its transportation. We will restore the old furniture and revive it for a second life.”
The new Vinted office will also make use of long-lasting, natural and real materials, which can be renewed as time passes – real wooden floors, metal industrial stairs, and carpets from recycled fabric.
Reducing plastic consumption and not wasting food
While Vinted has already been reducing plastic consumption in its office, upon moving to the new premises, plastic use will almost completely cease. Staff rest zones will have water dispensers installed with special taps which supply mineral, carbonated, filtered and hot water, allowing to completely get rid of single-use plastic containers. This and the use of other plastic goods will also be reduced in the cafe, which will settle on the first floor of the Vinted offices, where breakfast, lunch and dinner will be supplied.
Furthermore, the company is considering ways to reduce food waste. “Together with our suppliers, we are seeking ways to make use of food leftovers in order to discard as little as possible,” Užkurienė says.
The Vinted representative explains that it was no coincidence the Uptown Park business centre was chosen as the location of the new office. The A+ energy class office building is notable for its minuscule maintenance consumption all year round, and the business centre’s sustainable technical solutions, functional planning and the materials used for construction are all environmentally friendly.
The architect bureau DO Architects and project management company HML Project Management professionals are helping Vinted set up its offices. The project for the business centre Uptown Park, which the Vinted offices will soon relocate to, was completed by the real estate developer UAB Vilbra, with consultations from the real estate consultancy Newsec.
