Retail Directory 2009

Droog

New York

It might seem like a slightly awkward time to bring an Amsterdam-based design collective, known less for its frugality and more for its world-changing ethos of handmade and one-off and limited-edition and closer-to-art (and therefore expensive) design, to New York, but Renny Ramakers, historian and critic and, along with Gijs Bakker, founder of Droog, has no qualms about opening a SoHo flagship right in the middle of the crash. The five thousand-square-foot store opened with Blue House, an installation done in collaboration with Studio Makkink & Bey. Made out of polyurethane foam, wood, and stone, the house—presented in split-apart segments—offers both architecture and product, design and experience. Set through and around the blue house, Droog’s hits like the “You can’t lay down your memory” chest of drawers by Tejo Remy and Marcel Wanders’ Knotted Chair play off of the Body table by jokester Atelier van Lieshout and Jurgen Bey’s Tree-trunk bench. In the front of the store, vitrines hold Droog’s mass-produced objects, their removed display a reminder of the power and specialness of even a roll of tape. “They get a different appearance,” Ramakers says. “It shows that they have the same value as the big pieces.” Same value, maybe, but not the same excitement as a wall, installed in the downstairs exhibition space, developed specifically for the store, and constructed out of interlocking units that can be pulled off to become tables or stools introduces a sense of technophilic whimsy to the already playful space. Because Droog has no existing New York history to contend with, Ramakers is optimistic about the store’s prospects It would be hard, standing in such a collection of innovation, not to be.

76 Greene Street
New York, NY 10012-4379

www.droog.com