A Designer’s Home
- LOCATION
- Huam-dong, Seoul
- SCALE
- 92㎡
- PURPOSE
- Residence
- SERVICES
- Space Design, Construction, Furniture Fabrication
- BUDGET RANGE
- KRW 40,000,000
- YEAR
- 2025
"The height of the furniture is the height of the wall."
Strictly speaking, this is not a residence but a neighborhood commercial building. What was once a building divided into several small units had long been opened up into a single 25-pyeong (about 82m²) space, which the designer rents monthly and lives in as a home.
Because the building is old, it has an unusual number of columns. They stand scattered through the middle of the floor, so while the total area is not small, the amount of open, uninterrupted space is smaller than it looks. Add to that the condition of a rental: building walls or touching the fixed infrastructure was never an option.
So the columns became the reference points of the layout. The gaps between columns serve as the boundaries of each zone, and the width and height of every piece of furniture were set to match the column positions. The result is an arrangement in which the columns stop registering as obstacles, as if they had been placed exactly there by the original design.
All spatial division is handled by furniture. Between the entrance and the bedroom stand a shoe cabinet and a wardrobe; between the entrance and the living room, a low shelving unit. With windows on only one wall, light and sightlines needed to travel all the way through, so no partition rises to the ceiling. The height of the furniture is the height of the wall.
Each piece does two jobs. The low cabinet on the living room side handles storage for the entrance while doubling as the sofa’s headboard. The mirrored wardrobe screens off the bedroom while serving as the dressing area’s full-length mirror. This is how 25 pyeong divides into a bedroom, living room, kitchen, workspace, and dressing area without ever feeling closed in.
Every piece of furniture was produced by Ordinary Service, the furniture brand of Studio Underbar. Even the built-ins, like the kitchen, were newly designed for this space. Nothing fixed to the walls, nothing touching the floor or ceiling; the character of the space is determined by furniture alone. It was an experiment in how far “mobility interior” can go: a design you can take with you, furniture and all, when you move out.
The result was proven at move-out. The full facility premium was recovered upon leaving. An interior where the money you put in is not spent but returned. Even in a rental, design is possible.