During Milan Design Week 2024 from April 16 to 21, the Nieuwe Instituut presents the second edition of the New Store . In this experimental pop-up shop, which made its debut during Dutch Design Week 2023 in Eindhoven, we test alternative forms of production and consumption that make a positive contribution to people and the planet. New Store is not an exhibition with passive visitors: they supply the raw materials – in this case their hair, time and ideas – to a new, circular value chain and become co-creators of the end product: sustainable textiles and embroidery. This multi-year research project into alternative forms of shopping will ultimately lead to a permanent New Store with regenerative products in the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam.
Human consumption often depletes natural resources, produces waste and causes pollution. What if shopping could instead help regenerate life on Earth? In the New Store, the Nieuwe Instituut researches and tests such new, alternative ways of producing and consuming in practice. By using undervalued (waste) products and transparent transactions, we create new, sustainable value chains that make a positive contribution to people and the planet. Visitors are not passive customers, but just as much the raw material and co-creator of the end products.
The New Store is part of the Nieuwe Instituut’s ambition to be a testing ground, where new ideas are not only researched and presented, but also put into practice. The first edition of New Store took place during Dutch Design Week 2023 in Eindhoven, where three designers selected through an open call experimented with soap made from urine, do-it-yourself lighting and far-reaching insight into the journey a fish made for this ended up on your plate.
The long-term goal of the New Store project is a store where both the products and the physical place itself are regenerative. New Store 2.0 is the next step in that direction.
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The second edition of the New Store can be visited for free during Milan Design Week from April 16 to 21, 2024 at Stecca 3.0 , Via Gaetano de Castillia 26, Isola Design District, Milan. New Store is a collaboration with Temporiuso and powered by regenerative partner New Order of Fashion .
The New Store project is a long-term research project in collaboration with the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR ) and research agency The Seeking State . The intention is that in the longer term a physical New Store will open in the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam.