New StoreNew Store

In this first New Store pilot, we tested forms of consumption and invite visitors to try out regenerative products. This was the first phase of a multi-year project, in which the Nieuwe Instituut is collaborating with the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) and research consultancy The Seeking State. Together, we explore how retail can make a positive contribution to environmental and social processes in the long term.

During Dutch Design Week, three selected designers tested product ideas that rethink conventional consumer products by using alternative materials, production processes, working conditions, sales methods and eventual reuse. This ‘non-extractive’ way of working, which avoids extraction, exploitation and depletion, is the first step in a longer journey. 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.

The products presented in this first trial of the New Store were selected from the responses to an open call earlier in 2023. With the Eindhoven pop-up, the Nieuwe Instituut offered the selected designers a kind of lab where consumers can try out the prototypes. After its debut at Dutch Design Week, a second, expanded New Store will follow at the Salone del Mobile in Milan in 2024. In the longer term, the lessons learned from these experiments in regenerative design and retailing will hopefully come together in a physical New Store at the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam.

Photos: Jeph Francissen