New Store
Imagine a shop where being a customer helps — rather than harms — the environment. Nieuwe Instituut presents the New Store to rethink the concept of the ‘product’ and explore alternative forms of exchange. After two New Store pop-up stores, one at Dutch Design Week 2023 and the other at Milan Design Week 2024, you can now browse the shelves of pop-up 3.0 in the foyer of the Nieuwe Instituut. A fourth pop-up is presented at Paris Design Week 2025 (4-13 September), where visitors become active participants in the creation and research of regenerative fashion.
New Store’s ultimate goal is to be fully and thoroughly regenerative. Although we’re not there yet, these New Store pop-ups act as a testing ground that bring designers’ ideas and proposals into the real world. Together with external partners, the pop-ups delve into what it means to design, practice and purchase in a fully regenerative way.
As our visitor and potential customer, we could use your help to develop the concept of regenerative retail. In addition to shopping at the pop-up store, you can participate by taking part in a workshop, interview or activity. What we learn during this process, will help us to inform the further development of the New Store.
About the New Store
With its New Store project, Nieuwe Instituut is collaborating with the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) and research consultancy The Seeking State to explore how retail can make a positive contribution to environmental and social processes in the long term. The ‘non-extractive’ way of working, which avoids extraction, exploitation and depletion, is the first step in a longer journey towards regenerative retail. The path to regeneration runs from the current status quo of exploitation, through restoration and conservation, and ultimately to improvement.
The aim of the New Store is to work towards this improvement by testing and implementing new practices, projects and exchanges. What will this look like? Nieuwe Instituut calls on designers and creatives to think along in designing products, stores and exchanges in a different way.
Previous New Store pop-ups include New Store 1.0, presented during Dutch Design Week 2023 at Residency for the People, and New Store 2.0 at Milan Design Week 2024.
Collaborations
The development of the New Store project is the result of collaboration with the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR), The Seeking State, New Order of Fashion, Residency for the People, Temporiuso, Ferrari Fashion School, BlueCity, Central Saint Martins of the University of Arts London, the Centre for Economic Transformation of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Innofest, Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, Willem de Kooning Academy, as well as individual researchers and designers. The project is in part supported by the City of Rotterdam.