bHAN EAST

Please give us an overview of the project.

This is a gourmet food shop in the Gangnam district of Seoul that sells Yamaya mentaiko and a small selection of other gourmet Korean and Japanese foods. What we tried to do was to express that world of hand-picked delicacies through the design of the sliding paper screens. The screens can be changed seasonally, and together with the selection of food items that also rotates seasonally, they evoke the four seasons and express the theme of change over time. To allow the client to hold various food-related events in the space, we made the layout of the furniture and the overall design as simple and flexible as possible.

What points were particularly important during the design process?

Rather than a “Japanese” design, what the client requested was something that fused elements from both Japan and Korea. It became a question of deciding what to express, how to express a certain identity, and how to simplify, how to eliminate everything that was superfluous. The important point was that this was a food shop, so we decided to focus on seasonality. The way that landscapes change with the seasons is a common theme in both Japanese and Korean culture. We came up with the idea of expressing that theme through the fusuma (sliding paper screens).

The element we paid the most attention to was the paper for the screens. We thought it would be great to incorporate an element of traditional culture developed in Japan, so we commissioned Kyoto craftsman Ko Kado to design and produce the screens. All four seasons are expressed by using a single dot-shaped woodblock.  Just by varying the color and layout of the dots, they become snow or leaves, creating a minimalistic sense of the seasons. The design is abstract, but in the end its function is to highlight the products on display. We liked the fact that because the images are not exact copies of particular objects they arouse the imagination and evoke something different for each person. Viewed up close every color and texture is truly wonderful. We feel that no one but Kado could have achieved this effect.  

What challenges did you face in this project? How did you solve them?

The paper for the screens was a big issue for us. The paper was produced in Japan while the frames were constructed in South Korea. Kado came to South Korea together with a paper hanger to apply the paper to the frames. Because the screens were so big there was no place to do the work, so they ended up using the basement of the worksite and a warehouse owned by the construction company we were working with. At first we thought it might prove impossible, but in the end everything went surprisingly smoothly, and with the help of Kado and the construction firm we were able to create a beautiful space.

What did you learn from this project? What will you take from it to future work?

This was the first time that we worked outside of Japan. Rather than trying to create something entirely new with this project, we consider it a success if we were able to show the world a bit of our approach to design.  We want neither to imitate others nor to create ostentatiously original spaces, but instead to design what is truly needed in each situation.
 

What is the societal role of architecture and architects?

It’s important not to forget that one role of architects is as community developers. I also feel it’s crucial to think about each building in a town from the perspective of its interior. Our firm has designed hundreds of interiors, and what we’ve learned is that even the renovation of a small shop influences the urban landscape and changes the flow of people. Interior design has the power to exert great influence by changing the quality of a space through its furniture and other surface elements. The reason is that you’re dealing with the places that are closest to people, that people touch and feel. I think it’s important to look at community development from that same perspective. Occasionally when interiors lean too far towards an individual architect’s design sense or become dominated by selfish goals, they lose their primary function as pieces of architecture, becoming insubstantial, unattractive places. I believe that thinking about architecture from an interior perspective rather than as “architecture” will open up new possibilities and lead to the creation of more attractive communities.

E-mail interview by Yuna Yagi (translated from Japanese)