How This South Korean Coffee Shop Was Designed to Look Like a Cartoon

Greem Café in Seoul, South Korea, is a coffee emporium distinct any other. Upon entering a shop, congregation find themselves ecstatic into a two-dimensional universe desirous by a strike Korean charcterised Web array W. Inside a slight café, walls, counters, furniture, and even forks and knives are crafted to demeanour like two-dimensional drawings come to life. Dark outlines on each intent and matte white surfaces emanate an outcome that resembles a room ripped from a cartoonist’s notebook. Not coincidentally, W. follows a story of a male held between dual worlds, ours and an swap animation reality. The flat-line cultured pervades each aspect of a space from chairs to cutlery, compressing a room into a two-dimensional plane, and giving a sense that a space is done usually of so most paper and ink.

The shop’s name, Greem, comes from a Korean word that can meant a animation or a painting; it is also infrequently called Café Yeonnam-Dong 223-14, that is simply a café’s travel address.

chairs and list in a coffee shop

The pattern includes dim outlines and matte white surfaces, formulating an outcome that resembles a stage from a cartoon.

Marketing manager J.S. Lee tells Architectural Digest that a pattern is some-more than usually a gimmick to get people in a door, or a thoughtfulness of a personal passion for cartoons. The pattern is a café’s really reason for being. “I consider roughly all coffee brands supply identical coffee taste,” he says. Rather, it’s a knowledge that a café’s many congregation are after. Visitors, he says, “want to make singular memories in a noted place.”

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Indeed, a categorical pull to his coffee emporium doesn’t seem to be coffee during all; a discerning hunt for Greem Café on Instagram reveals an unconstrained swell of selfies in a supernatural space, all tagged to a café’s page. Three-dimensional tellurian beings grin as they poise on two-dimensional chairs that seem to be done usually of paper, and sip lattes and matchas from equally flat-looking mugs. Fully wakeful that amicable media is pushing a shop’s business, Lee has posted on Facebook reminding intensity guest that photography is banned until a caller has done a purchase.

chair and list in coffee shop

Due to a spike in amicable media posts from inside a space, a owners requires congregation to buy something from a café before holding any pictures.

In fact, a pull of a selfie has valid so absolute that a café has already outgrown a initial location; a emporium has changed into a incomparable space down a street, though kept a aged residence as a name for continuity. The strange café was a slight storefront, where buliding were cramped. In a new facility, sippers and selfie-takers can hang out on a roof terrace—complete with a stylized 2D clothesline and square seat in a café’s signature style. Lee also says that he expects to open additional coffee shops around Korea and, he hopes, a world.