Propagating the adage ‘Any great city deserves a great bookstore’, MENDO snugly nestled in Amsterdam‘s labyrinthine inner city almost two decades ago. Founded by Roy Rietstap and Joost Albronda, and currently also co-owned by Gunifort Uwambaga, the store recently relocated to new premises which form part of Hôtel de l’Europe‘s newly opened retail wing. Tongue-twistedly dubbed ‘t Huys, simply meaning ‘house’ in archaic Dutch, the new MENDO store occupies a lofty ground floor unit and has a street side entrance which its shares with other retail businesses in the late 19th century building. Interestingly, the owners fully abandoned the understated, black-hued aesthetic which allowed their former bookstore to stand out and adopted a more swanky bourgeois aesthetic aligned with the design codes of the plush five-star lodgings.
Created by Amsterdam-based design practice Nicemakers, which also happened to revamp the hotel premises, the store mimics a library, albeit a plush one, and sees a homey seating arrangement and single chairs and benches flanked on both sides by floor-to-ceiling wooden shelving and cabinets laden with trophy books. A carefully sourced selection of furnishings, comprising both new and vintage pieces, further add to the sense of domestic bliss. At the centre of the store, below a cascade of suspended lightbulbs, sits a large display table featuring a selection of potential trophy purchases. As always, MENDO presents a tightly curated selection of visually inspiring titles straddling the fields of art, design, architecture and urban subculture.
MENDO
Nieuwe Doelenstraat 10
1012CP Amsterdam
Telephone: +31 20 6121216
Mon-Sat 10-6
Sun 11-5
Publishers Note
Just to be clear – superfuture® is a design blog and not a political commentator. No surprise there. The scope of our content has always been global and borderless, however that can often mean covering projects in countries where we will not agree with the politics or actions of those countries. In a world that’s as screwed up as ever right now, the focus of our support is to those designers, architects and other creatives who aim to make the world a more liveable one – as opposed to people that try their hardest to destroy it. So if a project hits our desk and we like it based on its design credentials, we may choose to publish regardless of its location or creators nationality. superfuture® has always been inclusive and hopes for all current wars, aggression, violence, hate and extremism to end.
