Salon Guui

‘Salon Guui’ seeks a new possibility of refurbishment for an 80’s popular residential building type in Korea. The old building is 3 stories; semi-basement, uplifted 1st floor and the 2nd floor which has independent accesses representing spatial features of the 80’s building. It used to hold 5 residential units: 2 units for semi-basement, 1 for the 1st and 2 for the 2nd floor. The refurnished holds an office in semi basement and the 1st floor, and a single family residential for the owner of the office in the 2nd floor. The main working space of the office is placed in the semi basement. The 1st floor connected through cut-out slab from the semi-basement provides with multi-purposes, as a place of conference, exhibition for a guest, a space of rest and a theater for both office staffs and residents. Placed in between office at the semi-basement and residential at the second level, this uplifted 1st floor works as a ‘salon’ in the whole building.

‘Salon Guui’ advocates the value of architectural types, elements and finishes in the old building as a ‘collective style’ representing the 80’s. Independent access structure, details of Korean bay window, the concrete eaves and shingle, decorative stone stair guardrail, granite cladded concrete foundation and various plumbing systems have been maintained. Inside the project carefully reveals the inner layers, hidden materials and envelops’ changes in its 30 years history. The east side wall and slab in the 1st floor has the trace of the changes, from building’s construction, expansion and renovation. It shows 80’s unusual tectonics and material uses in its transition, such as red bricks piled up on granite bases, a window used as a niche and troweled surfaces for decorative moldings for people to experience 3 different time layers in one building.

Minimized new finishes are applied in exterior and interior. New mortar matching brick of the building is overlaid directly on existing mortar giving a monolithic sense of the volume. Old stair handrail and guardrail is wrapped with colored stainless steel panel. Typical Terrazzo floor with 900mm brass grid in 80’s is reinterpreted as a treated scale of line and surface. The 1st floor finish, 150 mm x150mm brass grid filled with black concrete and dark gray aggregates, has a ratio of distorted proportion of the grid to the size of the aggregates’ cross section. Without the extra finishes ‘Salon Guui’ makes 80’s Korean atmosphere unique with clear intention, strategy and detailing.