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Kwanpen Boutique by Betwin Space Design

Kwanpen Boutique by Betwin Space Design

This boutique in Seoul was designed by Korean firm Betwin Space Design to showcase crocodile-skin handbags.

Kwanpen Boutique by Betwin Space Design

Created for Singapore brand Kwanpen, the shop's exterior façade is clad in a relief comprising irregular prism shapes.

Kwanpen Boutique by Betwin Space Design

A grid of square boxes hang from the ceiling inside and rectangular recesses in the walls provide display areas for the products.

Kwanpen Boutique by Betwin Space Design

Photographs are by Pyojoon Lee.

Kwanpen Boutique by Betwin Space Design

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Kwanpen Boutique by Betwin Space Design

The following information is from the architects:


Betwin Space Design

Betwin Space Design is a young design studio starting on 2008 with director Hwanwoo Oh and Junggon Kim, who always are longing for new space and designing with inspirational concepts.

Kwanpen Boutique by Betwin Space Design

Betwin have deployed designs through experimental studies with new approaches by thinking of the relationship and relativity between the space and things, and the space and people.

Kwanpen Boutique by Betwin Space Design

They starts their design thinking on the most functional and basic elements such as usage, purpose, the user’s intention, and the spatial condition. Decorative elements are constrained and they unfold the space using the process by theme and concept. They believe that design is a process to express the space itself rather than a tool to design for ‘Design’.

Kwanpen Boutique by Betwin Space Design

KWANPEN

KWANPEN is a hand-made crocodile skin handbag brand based in Singapore. The KWANPEN Seoul boutique in Cheongdam-dong, Seoul, is designed to suit a small number of manias rather than the general population.

Kwanpen Boutique by Betwin Space Design

The brand’s Seoul store has a design element that is quite different from those of Singapore stores designed to an overall concept. The client who has the artisan spirit of their products, wanted a simple design so that it would not compete with the products.

Kwanpen Boutique by Betwin Space Design

Answering the client’s request to create a space where the protagonist in the space is the handbag, they started their inspirations from the characteristic of crocodile and gallery where the products can be displayed and exhibited as works of art.

Kwanpen Boutique by Betwin Space Design

The space concept is ‘Gallery’ where the decorative elements are devoid, and customers feel as if they are looking at works of art. The products stand out in the wall-mounted display boxes in a flood of light.

Kwanpen Boutique by Betwin Space Design

To deliver the sense of gallery-alike, it was designed to minimize the design elements and colors but only to shine products in shop.

Kwanpen Boutique by Betwin Space Design

Details not easily recognized and the radiating way of illuminating light were tested in various ways and carefully considered to give a certain effect of full of light in display box.

Kwanpen Boutique by Betwin Space Design

Unlike the conventional façade that features display windows, the front windows are completely closed, and the products are displayed in an active way through window showcase that it created in and almost reluctant way.

Kwanpen Boutique by Betwin Space Design

In order to communicate the brand identity, a modular material of crocodile skin is created to cover the whole closed façade surface. Employing brass which has excellent metal formability on façade, patterns of crocodile leathers were encoded and simplified.

Kwanpen Boutique by Betwin Space Design

KWANPEN express its brand identity itself through the space communicates with urban space and influences its immediate environment.

Kwanpen Boutique by Betwin Space Design

What appears abstract at first becomes a part of a larger story through the delicate experience and discovery of the space between exterior and interior. It is a gallery where the imagination becomes reality.

Kwanpen Boutique by Betwin Space Design

Project Name: KWANPEN
Design: Betwin Space Design / Hwanwoo Oh, Junggon Kim
Client: C&P International
Constructor: Betwin Space Design

Kwanpen Boutique by Betwin Space Design

Location: 100-3, Chungdam-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul
Design Period: Sep. 2010 ~ Nov. 2010
Completed: Dec. 2010
Use: Boutique Store (Handmade Crocodile Skin Bag)

Kwanpen Boutique by Betwin Space Design

Area: 98.9m2
Floor: White Concrete
Wall: Lacquer Painting
Ceiling: Vinyl Painting


See also:

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Stella K Showroom by
Pascal Grasso Architectures
3.1 Phillip Lim Seoul Flagship by Leong Leong Siki Im concept store by
Leong Leong