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Dutch coffeeshops are world famous for offering up endless varieties of pot on which to get spectacularly stoned. They aren’t illegal in the Netherlands--at least, not for some people--but most of them are so seedy that when you patronize them you feel like you’re doing something illegal.
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Hi/Lo bills itself as a “high-end” (uh, pun intended?) corrective. The first new coffeeshop in Utrecht in 20 years, it has a bright, airy main floor, complete with a glossy white reception desk, matching tables, colorful Foscarini Tropico lamps, and black Spiderwoman chairs from Hay. You could easily mistake the place for some sort of hip hotel lobby, if not for the pungent scent of Purple Haze wafting through the air.
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The notion of a “high-end” coffeeshop might seem a bit silly. After all, coffeeshops will attract customers no matter what; it’s not like they need sexy design to push their product. At the same time, good design can be a powerful way to acknowledge that pot users aren’t scofflaws who need to be shunted off to the dreariest recesses of the city. Perhaps more importantly, it can be excellent PR. As the designers, Utrecht-based Workshop of Wonders, tell it:
“We are... very proud of the fact that even though there were 250 (unsuccessful) appeals submitted by neighbors opposing this project, when they were invited a few weeks ago to have a look inside the vast majority was so impressed, their resistance went up in smoke.”
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COMMENTARY: Now that's what I call a classy "coffweed shop." Let's give the owners a standing ovation for creating a truly great coffee head shop experience worthy of getting high in total comfort, class and style. Thankfully there are still states in the U.S. that have not outlawed medical marijuana. There is still a great need for legally grown marijuana for medical reasons. In a blog article dated September 14, 2010, I profiled a San Francisco medical marijuana shop called SPARC, which is a cut above other legal marijuana shops.
Marijuana and establishments that sell it remain illegal in Holland, but the industry operates more or less in plain sight through a statutory gray area known as gedoogbeleid, roughly "tolerance." The tolerance policy protects smokers possessing five grams or less but cuts local government plenty of prosecutorial slack to harry shop owners at the first shift of Holland's culture wars. The national statutes are sufficiently loose and leaky that almost forty years after the first coffee shop opened its doors, the center-right Christian Democratic Appeal—until recently Holland's ruling party—has pledged to shutter every hash bar on Dutch soil.
And while coffee shops operate at the pleasure of city government, not national parties like the CDA, Holland's dope outlets have undergone a substantial die-off of late. In 1997, at least 1,019 coffee shops were doing business in the Netherlands. But after a quiet epidemic of denied shop-license renewals and selective enforcement of gedoogbeleid's caprices, today's number is closer to 700. Rotterdam alone closed a third of its shops in 2008. These are anxious times in the dope trade, which is why, through voluntary measures like today's clinic, shop owners are doing all they can to stay on the good side of the law.
Dutch ‘coffee shops’ – world renowned for the sale of cannabis – are rather seedy, to say the least. Utrecht’s newest coffee shop does not fit this description, however. The bipolar concept developed by Workshop of Wonders combines a convivial yet secure atmosphere with a sense of order and functionality.
Both heaven and hell play major roles in the concept. Heaven occupies the 100-sq-m ground floor, a light-filled space in which clouds adorn the walls. Hell – the same size as heaven – is darker, more intimate and underground, where you’d expect to find it. The designers’ biggest challenge was to furnish the coffee shop with ash- and roach-resistant tables, chairs and poufs. The solution lay in materials such as glass, steel and leather.
Graphic-design agency Dietwee, the outfit responsible for the shop’s identity, came up with the name Hi/Lo, clearly an allusion to the two levels within but, even more, a reference to how it feels to be stoned.
‘Why we accepted the job? Even though we don’t smoke dope ourselves,’ says Gerrit Vos of Workshop of Wonders, ‘we do have a passion for adventure and an understanding of the need to get away from it all.’
Courtesy of an article dated November 22, 2011 appearing in Fast Company Design
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