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Architects: studioVASE
- Area: 866 m²
- Year: 2017
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Photographs:Woo-Jin Park
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Manufacturers: Concret Doctor, Korea Brick, U&US, Younhyun Trading, jian flooring
Text description provided by the architects. There is a large-scaled building enough to overwhelm one side of residential area at Nonhyun-dong, Gangnam-gu. However somehow, no sign or notice seems to meet the eyes. After moving along the accessing stairs, the seers are captivated by a secret atmosphere as if they steal a glance at a hidden garden. In the garden, the composedness to purify their mind coexists with the dynamic to remind of tropical jungle. ‘ㄷ’-shaped large interior space makes our eyes busy. People enjoying food and tea, fresh fruits and organic beverages placed appetizingly next to them, green plants and unique daily goods... Although many elements are too intricate to classify as a specific space, it feels comfortable and relaxed exquisitely. It is just the power of Moss Garden’s first impression.
Moss Garden is a place where various contents aiming at the slow life gather together; a florist Zinna James’atelier and showroom ‘Zinna James Beautiful’, farm-made cafe ‘St. Lukemari’, farm-made kitchen ‘Good Samarian Recipes’, a director So Sun Lee’s ‘Sosun Favorites’, and lifestly shop ‘Moss Garden Market’. It is a complex space which serves as a flower shop, B&F shop, multi-shop and gallery, but the designer explains the concept of this space definitely in a word, ‘secret garden’.
“I intended to maximize its secret interest caused by low ceiling height and human traffic line like labyrinth. Because I have had a special bond with the client for years, I know his affection about the building well. He wanted to leave the old wood in the existing building and the nature imbued in the garden as they are. So I tried to create newness with living things harmoniously rather than adding artificial things to the space. I made a rear garden looking crude and primitive just like a scene of movies ‘Attila Marcel’ and ‘Great Expectations’.”
Leaving the building’s traces and elegance as they are, doesn’t mean not to change the spacial sense at all. It can be said that the way to produce results by blending materials suitable for Moss Garden’s taste verges on a kind of styling. The excellent aesthetic sense of clients, a couple of a CF director and a graphic designer, also contributed to it. Their firm taste and Studiovase’s experienced sensibility transformed a roughly-thrown space into a scene of high-quality CF. While the space flows fluidly as a sequence, the various dramatic devices are revealed in the right place.
Maybe because he didn’t cling to unnecessary design, Moss Garden is full of liveliness, just like good food cooked by a good chef with good materials, making an unique scene in a transitional zone between raw things and new things. Cafe&Restaurant ‘Good Samarian Recipes’ means not only a good Samaritan found in the Bible, but also something made of healthy materials with adding nothing. Ultimately, aesthetics of slowness shown in this somewhat intricate ‘secret garden’ tells the essence of good space secretly.
