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Architects: Creative Studio Unravel
- Area: 83 m²
- Year: 2022
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Photographs:Han Sung Hoon
A Catalyst - Lim Dong-Joon, the Creative Director of PAF (Post Archive Faction), is a storyteller of originality. If his story manifests a physical form, it will be of a nuanced subtlety and a provocative presentation of ecstasy. Each message is Post Archive Faction: PAF is reflective of his persona. The creative synthesis of layered abstraction sets the ground for the budding of pure forms. His exploration rejects and challenges any linear derivative. PAF's design message blooms from the pursuit of originality in storytelling and perception.
Encountering PAF leaves a surrealistic effect. It awakes a particular side of primitiveness, covert and dormant within nature. This sense of primal nuance is noticeable in the new flagship store, launching in the spring of 2022. Designed by Creative Studio Unravel, the store concept is motility. Motility acts as a mechanism of vitality, allowing multiple compositions of displayed products and their interactions with each other. Products on display are not floating entities in a fixed arrangement. They form a tuned union of abstract ideology and presentation. The organic coalescence constantly orchestrates dialogues and spatial configurations through the railing system on the ceiling. The rails set the stages for unique curations that refuse the stagnant presentations of displayed items. The curatorial performances generate the energy of epic events: the intervention of new motility through unique order-making, such as 'crash, overlap, and break.'
Outer 1 and 2 - It remains. This raw "residue" remains unruffled due to late enlightenment amid the construction. Some may categorize this unscathed dirt as a "lackluster" space that needs to be covered up. However, we disagree. The PAF flagship store is in a spatial flux. A continuous flip of the interior and the exterior blurs their fundamental distinctions. The dirt floor, dating back to a few centuries, sits in the interior with polished stone tiles from one night in November 2022. The ceiling and products on display form a mirage on the smooth floor- adding another layer of an alternate reality to the modern fabric of Seoul. The spatial cross-contamination originates from the designer's internal dialogues. Endless transactions of inner conversations take the stage on the periphery of the interior. Under the thin epidermis is where the cluster of the chaotic dialogues form a consensus. This spatial flux in one volume is indicative of the author’s perception: the "unfinished" space as a self-evolving organism that defies the glorified hegemony of permanence.
PAF has three line-ups of Left-Center-Right. They constantly take apart and put each other together. The dismantling and coalescing process represent the impermanence of what we deem as “perfect” fashion and space. The spatial duality -constantly battling over the homogenization of the real exteriors and the real interior- of the flagship store captures the resistance spirit of PAF. One may see stripping the space of door handles and interior lights as the esprit de résistance. Their negation only serves to evoke a sense of a transparent vacuum that connects one dimension to another. This bridge, according to the author, further reinforces the spatial mutability of the site, the flagship store, and its reliance on the shifting natural lights.
The new flagship store has three domains: Outer No.1, Outer No.2, and a meta-space. Outer 1 position itself as a primary exterior with multiple sources of light (natural light and streetlamps). Outer 2 grudgingly sits within the rigid interior frame. The shimmering reflection on the interior tiles grants another pool of meta-space to dive into. PAF is free from the didactic notion of time: gradually evolving and hinting at its independent state against any natural and man-made units. These uncanny assemblages of dimensions, matter, and lights within a single volume constantly renew and redefine themselves in a non-linear fashion with the procession of time.
