Once I read Francis Herbert Bradley’s text saying ‘a time’ is no other than a thing which comes toward us from future.

First sentiment arisen when I faced this building was the feeling of backbreaking or murky, then, I could dimly grasp any pains to come, and imagined the future image of this old and worn house, if regenerated after quite long period of struggles to fix it. Maybe I also had to remind a word such as ‘rebirth’. A project to convert such house in the last minute of its lifespan to shop building, is as almost same as making it reborn.

Also, when I took charge of a project to make the 2nd Andersson Bell store, that existing finishing materials piling many folds in the building brought up the image of a relics-like building which could be, hopefully, used commercially later only after renovation, and this place, 3rd store, seemed like an abandoned and incomplete sculpture needed a whole scale of renovation, adding or cutting. As of the time, I couldn’t help but to think that perhaps, these old places maintaining their history and traces for a long time, could be invaluable clues to explain the philosophy of Andersson Bell.

I prepared two keywords to renovate this Andersson Bell store. First one was ‘aplat’, and second one is ‘projection’. I preferred to make it to be gradually and naturally recognized by people after renovation, rather than provoking people with some artificial message penetrating the whole characteristic of the building.

First, I earned an inspiration from an abandoned fragment or a piece as a part of those materials. The word, ‘aplat’ means ‘frame’ or ‘framework’, and I think the process of producing a fragment resembles the process of architecture. Meanwhile, the systemic restriction of interior designer, come from its mechanism, is that we have always to design their interior from a framework already built by someone. As for me, I was drawn by Francis Bacon’s thoughts to resolve the headache or nuisance for me, in other words, this framework, because Bacon expresses a monotone background as a framework, and an object, figure or people in picture as a shape or form. By using this concept, once we thought ‘a sky’ as an aplat, we at least could add our sculptures on this frame as well as, at last, reinterpret and present the concept of ‘primitive colorlessness’ in the third store of Andersson Bell.

Second keyword was ‘projection’ mostly used for its ‘interior design.’ Our project was based on it, as the most basic concept, and at the same time, we tried to reinterpret easy, common, and generally used materials to be projected from different perspective. One day, when looking a mirror, one whimsical idea of ‘what is mirror?’ came to my mind, and I tried to define it myself. I had much wonder about the existence of mirror, which can project an object, but it all the more can’t be an objective by itself. It could be a tool to project an object. Or a plane of existence which doesn’t belong to anything by itself. I thought it would be only the mirror in places for them to project some existences by distorting it, to play a role to clip some frames of our time into our minds, before they already belong to the past.

Type: Fashion Flagship Store

Client: Andersson Bell
Location: 42, Yunboseon-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea
Floor Area: 120㎡
Involvement: Concept Design, Construction
Date of completion: Nov. 2022
Photography: Sunghoon, Han