Blue Bottle Coffee Samcheongdong Cafe
This place is situated in front of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art next to the Deoksugung Palace in the old town of Seoul. Many traditional Korean houses called Hanok are clustered in this area. A three-story commercial building and a one-story Hanok stand side by side on the sitem and we designed a cafe occupying four floors of the buildings. Contexts of respective places are incorporated in the design in order to create four floors with respective characteristics. In contrast with wide brick joints that are one of the unique characteristics of Korean architecture, bricks are laid with no joints, seamlessly connecting the stepped space continuing from the exterior floor to the interior floor and walls. We connected inside and outside in this way so that customers do not feel the relative distance and a gap between the road and the entrance. The continuous brick volume is partially raised here and there and turns into furniture pieces such as a display platform and an ordering counter. Going up to the second floor, one's eye level becomes the same level as the roofs of the surrounding Hanocks.We made large openings on the facade facing the Hanok cluster so that customers can enjoy the view of the dynamic roofs, and placed a cafe counter used as a main beverage bar serving expresso, drip coffee among others on the opposite side. Considering that customers in this seating area stay only for a short while, we installed cylinders made of cork in various sizes as seats. Then, going up to the third floor, a panorama of the palace and mountains beyond unfolds.We installed a bar counter facing the magnificent view, and placed lounge chairs in the remaining space to offer two different ways of enjoying moments of relaxation. The Hanok next to the main building has a C-shaped floor plan with a central couryard. We treated the three spatial zones respectively as a living room, dining room, and kitchen, and placed different types of furniture pieces accordingly. In these rooms, cafe staff members tend to customers on a one-on-one basis, which is a special type of service not offered in other Blue Bottle Coffee cafes. There is also a special approachway to the Hanok entrance, which only those who know the way around the Hanok cluster on the east side can access.Don’t miss it!
Data
Title:Blue Bottle Coffee Samcheong Cafe
Architect：Jo Nagasaka / Schemata Architects
Project team：Yui Matsushita
Location：76 Bukchon-ro 5-gil Samcheong-dong Jongno-gu, Seoul 03053
Usage： Cafe
Construction：DESIGN E-YEON
Collaboration：
BAR & KITCHEN(kitchen)
WHITELIGHT(sound plan)
PADOSIKMUL(plant plan)
Floors : 3 stories above ground and 1below, 1story
Site area：512.40m²
Building area : 136.28m²
Total floor area：360.44m²
Main building 1F area：105.33m²
Main building 2F area：102.38m²
Main building 3F area：65.83m²
Main building B1F area：55.95m²
Hanok total area：30.95m²
Hanok 1F area：30.95m²
Structure：Steel and RC,W
Completion：June/2019
Open : July/2019
Structure：Steel and RC,W
Photo：Kyungsub Shin