The Olaf Hussein store interior celebrates relationships, both human and environmental, captured in a modular, friendly aesthetic we called ‘soft minimalism’.

Innovation
The three main challenges:
1. a complicated spatial situation: The store is located in two adjacent ground floor spaces of separate historic buildings that have been connected through a small passage with an odd eight columns scattered throughout the 150m2 space.
2. Sustainability.
3. Budget. We opted for a super affordable material (cardboard), with which we built a structure that replaced expensive work like reinforced walls, fancy claddings, etc.

Functionality
A continuous horseshoe wall connects the two spaces. The wall is punctured by two polished stainless steel vitrines, and the third puncture houses the fitting rooms and connects the horseshoe with the daylight coming from the courtyard. The flexible, modular blue showpiece at the end of the store functions as window display, a store-facing display and seating element

Creativity
Creativity in this project is in solving sustainable and functional problems in an affordable, and aesthetic way. What’s interesting to mention here: The round shape of the tubes imbues them with structural strength while minimizing material usage. When configured in a curved sequence, the room dividers become self-supporting, even holding the clothing racks while remaining affordable and with nearly zero environmental impact, while omitting unsustainable reinforcements like plywood and gypsum board.

Sustainability
Serious sustainability is boring to the consumer; it’s in the stuff you don’t see! we did a life cycle analysis of the store interior - the CO2 emissions of materials, construction work and electricity usage during a 5-year period. Conclusion: heating, cooling and electricity account for 90% (!)of the CO2 footprint of a typical store in the Netherlands. So we started addressing these.
• energy efficient LED tubes placed in the re-used lighting fixtures
• we did NOT install AC-units. Instead we designed the store to be naturally cooled through inlets of fresh air.
• we did NOT install an air curtain at the door. A big sustainable statement.

The decisions mentioned above account for the main chunck of sustainability measures. The interior fit-out accounts for the rest.

The goals here were:
• circular materials: not down-cycling of materials, but really re-cycling them.
• minimal use of gypsum board
• no use of paints and other chemical finishes
• Instead of building (gypsum board) walls, we used cardboard tubes – a truly circular material. Cardboard is omnipresent and has little value: it's always locally recycled and if you throw it away it's not downcycled into something of less value, you can basically just make it wet and make new cardboard to reuse again.
• the other material we used is locally (European) recycled stainless steel – locally recycled stainless steel has a much lower impact then new steel.