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by Sean Ronnie Hill on Sep 11, 2026
Most of what we write about is housing: extensions, retrofits, low-energy new builds. This one is a shop, and it is a shop we know unusually well. INDOI Ghar at Carrer de Maria Aguiló 83, Poblenou, is the Barcelona home of INDOI, the slow fashion label founded by Mallika Chaudhuri, and RISE Design Studio designed and helped build it. We wrote about the project while it was still a building site. The doors opened in May 2025, and a year and a bit on, this is the piece about what it became, and why a label making sustainable clothes in Barcelona and a practice making low-energy buildings turned out to be working on the same problem.
Rattan pendants, reclaimed shelving and the original floor at INDOI Ghar, Poblenou. RISE Design Studio.
What INDOI makes
INDOI makes clothing from natural fibres, in small runs, with the people who make it named rather than hidden. In a city where most "sustainable clothes in Barcelona" searches lead to the same handful of international chains, it is a genuinely local answer: designed here, partly made here, and sold from a single shop in Poblenou. The core collection is designed in Barcelona and made in a small family workshop in Karachi, Pakistan, where cutting, sewing and finishing all happen under one roof so that fabric is not shipped between stages. A second strand, the Roots collection, is cut and assembled by hand in Barcelona to order, with a lead time of two to three weeks.
INDOI Ghar on Carrer de Maria Aguiló, Poblenou. The original fanlight was kept and the joinery painted INDOI blue. RISE Design Studio.
The fabrics carry the argument. INDOI works with organic cotton, handwoven regenerative cotton grown with the Oshadi Collective in India in a way that puts carbon and structure back into the soil, natural dyes, silk, and upcycled antique textiles for the one-of-a-kind pieces. Stock is deliberately thin, typically no more than five of any garment, and the label does not run sales. Offcuts are either donated or worked into patchwork pieces, so very little leaves the workshop as waste.
The women's range covers shirts and blouses, trousers, dresses, jumpsuits, waistcoats, jackets, bra tops and scarves, and the pieces are cut to work across seasons rather than for a single one. There is already the occasional unisex piece, and a men's collection arrives this autumn, made the same way and from the same fibres, which will make INDOI Ghar one of the few places in Barcelona to buy sustainable men's clothing that is cut and sewn rather than simply labelled.
Mallika's own description of the approach is that INDOI is less interested in the phrase "sustainable fashion" than in sustainable consumption and production: buying fewer garments, made properly, by people paid properly, from fibres that can go back into the ground. It is a definition an architect can recognise.
The tea room at INDOI Ghar, finished in blue limewash with a restored vaulted ceiling and original floor tiles. RISE Design Studio.
Why an architecture practice cares about a clothes shop
The overlap is not a coincidence. RISE Design Studio's work is fabric-first, in the building sense: insulation, airtightness, daylight and materials get decided before any technology is bolted on, because those are the decisions you cannot cheaply undo. INDOI is fabric-first in the literal sense. In both cases the material is the strategy, and the marketing follows from it rather than the other way round.
The other shared principle is reuse. In our retrofit work in London the greenest building is usually the one that already exists, because its embodied carbon has already been spent. The same holds for an antique sari reworked into a jacket, and it held for the shop itself.
The welcome wall at INDOI Ghar, lettered in English and Catalan. RISE Design Studio.
Reveal, don't replace: how the space was built
The unit on Maria Aguiló is a ground-floor "bajos" in a nineteenth-century Poblenou block, the kind of space that has been a workshop, a store and a bar over its life. The brief was a retail front, a workshop area for classes and mending circles, a small design studio and a tea room, in a footprint most fit-out contractors would have lined out in plasterboard within a fortnight.
We did the opposite. The vinyl tiles came up and the original terrazzo underneath was cleaned and left as the floor. The timber doors were stripped back to bare grain. The old walls kept their texture and were finished in Bauwerk limewash, a natural lime paint that lets the masonry breathe and takes pigment softly rather than sitting on the surface like acrylic. Shelving is reclaimed pine. The lighting is second-hand. Almost nothing new was manufactured for the shop, and most of the labour, sanding, lifting, painting and rewiring, was done by hand by the people who now work there.
That approach costs time rather than money, which is the right trade for a small independent business. It also produces a space that photographs and feels like the clothes: warm, matte, slightly imperfect, and clearly made by someone.
A shop that is also a workshop
The reason INDOI Ghar is called a home ("ghar" in Hindi and Urdu) rather than a store is that selling clothes is only part of what happens in it. The workshop space hosts tapestry classes, mending circles and wellbeing sessions, and the tea room is there so that people stay after they have bought something, or without buying anything at all. For a brand built on slowness, the retail plan has to allow people to slow down, and that means seating, daylight and a room that is not entirely given over to rails.
We have written before about retail and the Kindness Economy, the idea that a shop should give something back to the street it sits on. Poblenou's small-shop streets, Maria Aguiló chief among them, are exactly where that argument gets tested, and a fit-out that keeps the old floor and the old doors is a small act of keeping the street as it is.
The design studio and workshop behind the shop, where the Roots collection is cut and made to order in Barcelona. RISE Design Studio.
Where to buy sustainable clothes in Barcelona
INDOI Ghar has been open since May 2025 at Carrer de Maria Aguiló 83, Bajos 1, 08005 Poblenou, Barcelona, a few minutes' walk from Poblenou metro and the Rambla del Poblenou. If you are looking for sustainable women's clothing in Barcelona now, or sustainable men's clothing from this autumn, made in natural fibres by named makers, it is the place to start. Opening hours, workshop dates and the full collection are at indoi.world, and the Roots collection can be ordered to measure from anywhere.
Pattern cutting for the made-to-order Roots collection at INDOI Ghar, Poblenou. RISE Design Studio.
Frequently asked questions
What makes INDOI's clothes sustainable? Natural fibres only (organic cotton, handwoven regenerative cotton, silk and upcycled antique textiles), small runs of no more than five per garment, offcuts donated or reused, no discounting, and production in one workshop so fabric is not shipped between stages. INDOI describes this as sustainable consumption and production rather than "sustainable fashion".
Is regenerative cotton better than organic cotton? Organic cotton is grown without synthetic pesticides or fertilisers. Regenerative cotton goes a step further and is farmed so that the soil gains carbon and structure over time, which typically means less irrigation too. INDOI sources its regenerative cotton through the Oshadi Collective in India.
Does INDOI make clothes to order? Yes. The Roots collection is cut and assembled by hand in Barcelona to order, with a lead time of two to three weeks, and can be shipped anywhere.
Does INDOI sell men's clothing? A men's collection arrives in autumn 2026, made from the same fibres and by the same makers. Until then there is the occasional unisex piece in the range.
Where is INDOI Ghar and can I buy online? The shop is at Carrer de Maria Aguiló 83, Bajos 1, Poblenou, Barcelona, near Poblenou metro. The full collection is also sold online at indoi.world.
Who designed the shop? RISE Design Studio, working alongside INDOI's founder. The fit-out kept the original terrazzo floor, timber doors and masonry walls, finished with natural limewash and reclaimed pine shelving. There is more on the build in our earlier post.
If you are planning a shop, studio or workspace of your own, in London or Barcelona, and you would rather restore a space than strip it out, we'd be glad to talk it through. Please do get in touch and we can look at what your building already has to offer.
→ Email us at architects@risedesignstudio.co.uk
→ Or call the studio on 020 3947 5886
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