Himmel Hemp | A Pop-up Store to Spread Good Will

Students of the Exhibition Design Master created a Pop-up store for the fair-trade enterprise Himal Hemp.

The organization “Himal Hemp )” concerns itself mainly with the topics “Nepal”, “the Himalayas” and the slogan “together we grow”. Together, we – the exhibition design students of the year 2018 – had the opportunity to grow a pop-up store for the fair, organic brand.

When we thought about the Himalayas, the first thing that came to our minds mind were prayer flags. They are most common in Buddhism, they are small, rectangular and five-coloured. The flags hang on strings high up in the mountains, usually diagonally from a higher to a lower point. Contrary to what one might expect, they are not meant to carry prayers to God but the wind should carry out kind messages and mantras into the world, and thus benefit everyone. This is exactly where our idea comes in, because “Himal Hemp” also wants to benefit everyone: nature as well as mankind. Of course, they are putting the producers in Nepal first. However, also the pop-up store itself is supposed to bring good, organic and fair products to customers and in turn create benefits for all of us. That’s why our goal was to build a small sky to hang the products, so that the wind can carry backpacks, T-shirts and other things like good mantras out into the world.

After four students created the basic idea, four more students joined the team. All of them joined forces to build a “Himmel Hemp” prototype. Many hours of work at the FH JOANNEUM, in the classroom but primarily in the workshop resulted in a construct that can hardly be called a prototype anymore. A plug-in system composed of wooden boxes and sticks, as well as a modular hanging system consisting of rings, a clothes rail, a mirror and hemp ropes offer plenty of space for sustainable products and for specifically designed “prayer flags” containing information about “Himal Hemp” and its development work under the brand “Nepal Direct”. In the end the founding principles of the organisation served not only as inspiration, but became an integral part of our pop-up store.

In the middle of May 2019 our “Himmel Hemp” was ready to be built up at FH JOANNEUM and to be presented to an interested audience. The client, Andreas Kramer, was just as happy as the whole pop-up store team. Together we celebrated with a particularly made unicorn cake and lots of smiles in our faces. We are already looking forward to presenting our “Himmel Hemp” at various markets and festivals and we wish “Himal Hemp” a lot of fun with it. May the pop-up store carry great products out into the world!

Concept: Federica Merloni, Anna Neuner, Leon Ruf, Laura Ruggenthaler; Prototype: Federica Merloni, Julia Neudorfer, Anna Neuner, Kristina Ozimic, Mirjam Resztej, Leon Ruf, Laura Ruggenthaler, Goran Sudar; Text: Anna Neuner; Photography: Michael Forster, Anna Neuner