The Lantern - The literal and mythological meaning of the lantern is highly significant throughout Asian history—it leads you through the dark, showing you the way and indicating the beginning and end of a journey. Neri&Hu’s radical transformation of an existing five storey building in Seoul, South Korea, into a grand flagship store for leading Asian skincare brand Sulwhasoo is inspired by these notions of the lantern.

The building was designed by Korean architect IROJE and built in 2003. Celebrating the roots of the brand, Neri&Hu wanted to develop a concept with strong connections to Asian culture and traditions, ultimately allowing customers to discover the wealth of Asian wisdom that underpins the Sulwhasoz ethos.

The concept originates from three key points that were defined at the very start of the project - Identity, Journey and Memory. Neri&Hu aspired to create a space that appeals to all the senses, that captures the customer immediately as they approach the building, creates an experience that continues to unfold during the journey through the store, and leaves a strong impression with visitors long after they have left.

This is what led to the lantern concept, where a continuous brass structure is the element ties the whole store together, guiding customers while they explore the full extent of the space.

In creating a series of voids and openings in the building, visitors fully experience the structure as it moves through the space and envelops the different programs. Mirror volumes are inserted into a wooden landscape to reflect and amplify the seemingly endless structure.

The delicate structure rests upon a solid ground of wide timber floor boards that occasionally rises up to form wooden counters with inserted solid stone blocks, on top of which Sulwhasoo’s products are displayed as precious objects. While it is primarily a guiding mechanism, the lantern structure is also a source of light—hanging within it are custom light fixtures that turn the structure into the main attribute to frame and highlight the products on display.

Navigating through the five storeys, customers experience changes in atmosphere. The basement spa with its dark brick walls, earthy grey stone treatment rooms and warm crafted wood floors has a sense of intimacy and shelter for visitors. Moving up the building, the material palette becomes lighter and more open, inviting visitors to interact with the space, culminating finally in a roof terrace with its free-flowing brass structure canopy that frames vast views of the surrounding city.

The journey is a constant contradiction between two counterparts: enclosed to open, dark to light, delicate to massive.The holistic approach to the lantern concept—from space-making to lighting to display to signage—gives visitors a sense of endless intrigue and urges them to explore the spaces and products with passion and delight.

Architects : Neri&Hu Design and Research Office Location : 650, Sinsadong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, South Korea Principals in Charge : Lyndon Neri & Rossana Hu Associate in Charge : Anne-Charlotte Wiklander Area : 1949.0 sqm Project Year : 2016 Photographs : Pedro Pegenaute Manufacturers : Flos, Fritz Hansen, Vitra, e15, Classicon, Roll&Hill, Dela Espada, Carl Hansen, Viabizzuno, Gandia Blasco, Serge Mouille, Mattiazzi, Labo, Kvadrat, Vola, Arne Jacobsen, Stellar works, Parachilna Designers : Sela Lim, Yinan Li, Kailun Sun Senior Associate - Product Design : Brian Lo Associate - Product Design : Nicolas Fardet Senior Associate - Graphic Design : Christine Neri Graphic Designers : Haiou Xin, Litien Poeng

Neri&Hu Design and Research Office

Chang Ucchin (1917-1991) is a preeminent painter of the Korean modern period. He was influenced by European pre-war painters as well as Korean painting. The museum project was initiated by the collaboration of the Chang Ucchin Foundation and the city of Yangju, 10 kilometers north of Seoul. The site is on the edge of a small mountain, at the meeting point of two rivers.

From the early days of the competition proposal, we focused on designing a specific space that would reflect the painting’s own character, rather than producing a generic, “perfect” exhibition building. Like the painter’s own art, we would avoid to propose neither a modern museum nor a Korean traditional image.

Instead we started from a few selected paintings, describing abstract room images, landscape and animals (tiger, bird, tree and mountain), a house. Scattered rooms, in a traditional pattern, would then be weld together to form a body, floating in a painting like landscape, with a mountain background. The shape of the building itself present the ambiguity of simultaneously being an animal figure, an abstract sign, a traditional house and a labyrinth.

The program is simply organized on three levels; a looped circuit first floor that offers sometimes open views or steep mountain slope views, framed by plain exhibition walls and high ceilings. The second level is a succession of separated attic rooms in a semi obscurity that would be fit for paper drawings and small formats. The basement contains services, seminar rooms and secured storage. The whole interior space gives the impression of a labyrinth house where you never get really lost. It offers shadows and contrasted views, avoiding the feeling of being in a perfectly lit conventional museum space.

The façades are clad with polycarbonate extruded panels, which were chosen for their seamless weightlessness. White frame and plastic, in a style close to the local agricultural industry was the way chosen to avoid any monumentality or official reverence. The landscape is organized by the previously existing clearing, intervention is kept to a bare minimum; a few concrete walls and paths, the recycling of remaining walls, the preservation of the large chestnut trees that seem to thrive on this side of the mountain, the old picnic place maintained on the river shore.

Architects : Chae-Pereira Architects Location : Gyeonggi-do, South Korea Area : 1650.0 sqm Project Year : 2014 Photographs : Park Wansoon, Thierry Sauvage Engineer : Jin Young Kim (J.Tec Structural Engineering Co.,Ltd), Sang Kwon Kim (BOW M.I.E Consultant), Suk Hwan Kwon (Ellim Consultant Co.,Ltd.), Chang Gyu Choe (MK Engineering & Consultant Co.,Ltd) Site Area : 6600m² Gross Floor Area : 1852m²

Chae Pereira Architects

Shear House, a single family house in Korea, seeks how a simple treatment in pitched roof typology improves environmental qualities and influences to program organization. The volume of gable on the West end changes its placement along with body of house.

It projects out toward South at the East end, while maintaining its triangular shape. The sheared volume is continuously pulled out towards South responding to sun orientation. It creates a deep eave in South and a terrace in North.

The eave blocks direct sunlight in summer and allow natural lighting in winter. Openings at terrace in second level increase natural ventilation throughout the whole house. In addition double skin-facade controls heat and humidity thus the house reduces 20% of heat gain and loss in summer and winter.

The house has two different ends, a typical gable end, and a sliced & shifted one in a monolithic structure and material. Shear House adds a new scene on the existing landscape. At the entrance of the town people face a typical gable wall. As they walk to the house entrance, they slowly recognize changes of eave and shadow and finally realize the sheared face at the entrance of the house.

Two bedrooms, bathroom, library, stair and kitchen are placed in North half of the house. South half, a double height space, is a long and sculptured living room, which has generous multi-purpose space for client to invite many people in special occasions. The living room that goes through East end to West end, provides dynamic spatial qualities and light filtration in its depth and height with various visual connections.

Unlikely simple and static exterior, interior spaces provide playful experiences on changing geometries. Though rooms are rectangular in plan, laid out on grid, walls are triangle, parallelogram, and trapezoid in elevation due to its intersection with shifted roof volume.

Location: Kyung Buk, Yecheon, Korea Program: Single Family Residential Dimension / Area: 22'x45'x20' / 990 sf Structural Engineering: Duhang Engineering Client: Private Completed Year: 2016 / Apr. Photograph: Song Yousub

stpmj is an idea-driven design practice based in New York and Seoul. The office is found by Seung Teak Lee and Mi Jung Lim with the belief that the work explores a new perspective built from careful observations of material, structure and program expanding to the social, cultural, environmental, and economic phenomena of our time.

stpmj navigates on uncharted territory of material experiments focused on its sensoriality and performativity expanding our conventional material culture to broader built environment. We seek provocative works that speculate on a broad range of investigations, leveraging the potential of materials in the stage of concept and production.

stpmj