This Nike Store Is Made Out of Actual Garbage (Shoes Excluded)

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

Nike is giving its rotating roster of collaborators a forever home with the launch of NikeLab—a Mercer Street shop (with cousins in London, Paris, Milan, Shanghai and Hong Kong) whose architecture is just as innovative as the athleticwear it houses. Meaning, it's made out of actual garbage. Or, at least, parts of it are.

The interior, created by Nike Retail design director Tim Rupp with the help of Arthur Huang, replaces the traditional steel-wood-glass store model with lightweight, modular units crafted from repurposed materials. Think milk jugs and DVDs reincarnated as shelving, gym bars turned into clothing racks, and seats whose felt-like fabric is derived from crushed-up water bottles. ("If we get sick of the seats we can turn them into jerseys," Huang jokes.)

All this (which reads as futuristic, not freegan) serves as a backdrop to limited-edition wares like World Cup-themed gear, and NikeLab's star launch—the Free Mercurial Superfly HTM (bathed in a halo of red light, above).

Stop by to try them on (they're already sold out online), or just see if you can figure out what the super-slick art installations are really made of.

· NikeLab [Official Site]
· All Now Open Posts [Racked NY]

NikeLab

21 Mercer Street, New York, NY, 10013