The Cooking Library in Seoul is a five-storey space for Hyunday Card (HC) that celebrates and brings to life the joys of cooking. It has been recently completed by London-based food and beverage design studio, Blacksheep.
The Cooking Library
One of Korea’s largest credit card companies opened its fourth analog library fully dedicated to the pleasures of cooking and designed by Blacksheep studio.
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- 07 June 2017
- Seoul
The Library has been developed through five floors with the aim to take the visitor into a journey through the stimulation of the senses, by scent, sound and sight. The new building offers a deli, a shop, a bakery and café, a library, an “ingredients house”, a kitchen for cooking classes, a “recipe room”, a greenhouse and a basement that hosts a professional kitchen. The Cooking Library is part of a series of four inspirational libraries conceived by HC, designed to provide an ‘analogue’ antidote to the fast pace of city life in the digital age and to stimulate meaningful and inspiring experiences in everyday life. Each of the Libraries touches the realms of travel, music, design and cooking; the last library in the series.
The inner spaces of the HC Cooking Library have been designed to connect organically over five floors. Each space is distinguished by the experiences offered within and is linked to the next space. The ground floor is home to a deli, shop, bakery and café, all open to HC card members and the general public. The Library on the first floor is an analogue playground dedicated to the discovery of books and exploring cooking ingredients. It is a calm and thoughtful place where intuitive design and playful gestures encourage guests to navigate a vast collection of more than 10,000 cookery books.
The first floor also houses the Ingredients House a dramatic display of hundreds of ingredients from around the world including rice bran oil, annatto and myrtle. It is a curated and insightful display system that celebrates crafted luxury and encourages visitors to explore the archive and experiment with its ingredients. The Kitchen on level three is where the concept of cooking comes to life, celebrating human involvement in the cooking experience and embracing domestic approaches to the culinary arts. Adjacent to the Kitchen, an architectural, glass-framed canopy creates The Greenhouse, conceived as an outdoor/indoor dining environment. Lastly the kitchen space on the basement floor is an inspiring pantry of abundance, offering insight into a working kitchen.
The Cooking Library, Seoul, South Korea
Program: multifunctional building
Design: Blacksheep
Completion: 2017