From Nido Shop
“The goal was never to replicate products. It was to replicate opportunity, so artisans could make a living by being artisans, keeping their traditions alive through the work itself.”
Nido Shop
The Architecture
of Quiet Rebellion
Nido began with a question: could design become another crop?
Through collaboration with Indigenous artisans in Panama, the project connected craftsmanship to contemporary clothing and everyday life. The Coronado shop became a place to develop, test, and make that work visible.
The book traces the system behind it: the Patch Economy, the use of soft power, and an intervention whose purpose extended beyond the storefront.
What it was for
Raise the value of Panamanian craft within a global market.
How it worked
Connect artisan production, adaptable design, and contemporary use.
What's left
A transferable approach that reaches beyond a single garment, trend, or shop.
Read an excerpt from the book
“I don’t mind saying, now, what I only half had the language for then: from the very beginning, this was a systems intervention, aimed quite specifically at raising the value of Panamanian craft to the level of the global market. I didn’t have the full shape of that goal in the early years in Capira. I couldn’t have described the mechanism, the Patch Economy, or any of the language this book has since found for it. But the intention was there before the vocabulary was, said out loud, in whatever rooms would have me, long before I could prove it.”