SEPTEMEBER 16 is a Coffee + Wine Bar in the fashionable Hannamdong district of Seoul, Korea. Carved from an old existing concrete building, we wrapped the outside with a metal screen to create a more uniform face to a very chaotic and mixed neighborhood.  Depending on the time of day and the lighting, the screen becomes either a translucent face or a more transparent, diaphonous slip of space.  Fashioning an unused space into a patio/garden, you enter through what seems like a small alley into a warm, inviting space.  The architecture is a mixture of wood and cement  and steel and glass and creates an environment that works both for the daytime (coffee) and at night (wine).  The owner is a French trained chef, and the space has a private dining room where he can hold intimate dinner parties for denizens of the Seoul nights.

This project was a collaboration with David Schaefer of Furniture Co to re-design the lobby of an existing building in the Meatpacking District of  New York City. In what was an old industrial warehouse-type building on the outskirts of a booming new neighborhood, we designed a simple, restrained walnut paneled wall to hide the accessible lift and guide visitors into the building.  We stripped down the idea of the building canopy to its structural essence and added beautiful custom lighting elements. Simple.

A small suburban modern children’s store, Honeycomb is a lifestyles boutique that caters to the individuality and creativity of mothers and their children. We created an intimate and warm retail environment using a bent metal shelving system (BMS, www.phproduct.com) in custom candy colors. A large door made from an extruded aluminum “honeycomb” panels separate the retail and the back office as well as a small dressing area. We also custom designed the plywood cash wrap and storefront “play” area for children to try out some of the merchandise.

Ilene’s is a 1200 square foot “lifestyles boutique” located in a suburban setting on the south shore of Long Island. Catering to a diverse clientele, Ilene’s sells an eclectic line of jewelry, fashion accessories, clothing, home furnishings, gift merchandise, and art. The design challenge here was to provide a variety of selling zones within a small space that provided adequate interest for the items being presented. There are four zones: the storefront, the jewelry cases, the cashwrap and lounge, and the apparel area. Each area is defined by the frame of the walls and ceiling, which changes subtlely from area to area, and by a series of fluorescent lighting tube installations which are different colors (and can be changed) for each zone. All of the display furniture and cases were custom-designed for the store in ebonized mahogany and glass.

Designed as a prototype for a chain of “American-style” Chinese food eateries in Korea, Ho Lee Chow is a kit-of-parts design that consists of three elements: laser-cut partitions, furniture, and special material finishes. The concept behind the kit-of-parts approach is that all the elements can be manufactured off-site and installed in a variety of ways in almost any location. The design standardizes the sizes of all the elements and allows for multiple uses of all the various pieces. For example, the thick partitions serve to separate the spaces but also as lighting elements, storage, and serving stations for each area. Each restaurant accommodates a reception area / waiting area, bar, main dining room(s), and private dining rooms. There are currently four restaurants built in Seoul, Korea.

Asked to renovate a warren of small, cluttered rooms into a clean, open space for performances and classes for a non-profit dance company, we were able to carve out performance, dance and warm-up spaces as well as an office, storage space, and dressing rooms out of the 2000 square foot envelope of an old NYC loft. The main function as a dance space guided a considerable part of the limited budget into the sprung maple flooring. Large (4’-0” x 10’-0”) aluminum and lumasite panel doors on industrial tracks were used to open and close the spaces for the varied program. And the office was designed like a clamshell to open up as office space during daytime hours and as a more formal reception space during performances. Likewise, large storage cabinet doors and curtains perform double duty as dressing rooms during performances.

The Factory is a 25,000 SF renovation of an industrial building to house the production space for a custom door hardware manufacturer.  Each of the floors houses a specific set of machinery and the products work there way through the levels to end in the shipping area and the loading docks.

PROJECT BY HAN ARCHIBALD DESIGN