NPSP produces flax based signage for Parc Auguste Badin

The beautiful Parc Auguste Badin, in Barentin, Normandie France, has a lot to offer. Nature, heritage, playgrounds, a skatepark. Plenty to explore. And now also a new layer of storytelling. These signs are made from a biocomposite of flax and hemp. Not by coincidence. The park is located on a former industrial site in a region with a long history of flax and hemp processing. So the material literally connects the place to its past. Designed to last. Made from plant-based fibres. And produced to bring stories back into the landscape. Great to see how this came together!

Credits to everyone involved: Design: Rémy DOGNIN Typography: David Poulard (Ordinaire) Manufacturing, graphic design and installation: BOSCHER SIGNALETIQUE ET ENSEIGNE Landscape architect: Agence Laure Planchais Client: Ville de Barentin Biocomposite concept & engineering: Nabasco Sign by NPSP

Wikipedia wrote:

Auguste Badin was one of the last Norman "self-made men" and at the same time one of the most remarkable. His father, a linen merchant, had to give up this trade, which was too much overshadowed by large-scale industry, to become a factory worker in Barentin, and took his son with him. Auguste Badin arrived in 1842 "in clogs" from his village of Brethel and started at the age of twelve as a linen finisher in Monsieur Dutuit's flax factory. He rose quickly through the ranks and became factory manager five years later. In 1861 he obtained a loan of 200,000 francs to buy the factory. By the age of thirty he owned a company, albeit still modest (less than 100 employees), which was mainly engaged in spinning flax, not cotton. To this important fact and to the man's genuine talents were added the skillfully seized opportunities of a paradoxically favorable situation. Characterized by the severe "cotton crisis," the 1860s saw a surprising revival for competing textiles, whose former price disadvantage was temporarily removed by the extremely high cost of cotton, which had become scarce due to the American Civil War. Auguste Badin developed the linen industry and subsequently diversified from the 1870s, building a cotton mill that was completed in 1871 and a jute and hemp mill that was completed in 1897. He worked for his employees by financing a school and a nursery in Barentin (1864), and subsequently from 1875 onwards numerous other projects (an orphanage, a workshop, mutual aid organizations, pension societies, recreation societies). In 1897 he built a workers' housing estate. The company then had more than 2,000 employees.