Hyundai VIP Lounges by Jaime Hayon
In Seoul, Jaime Hayon has unveiled new lounges in two leading department stores. His iconic universe welcomes a young generation of shoppers in search of a sophisticated and unique experience.
One of my last trips abroad before the pandemic started was to Seoul late November 2019. During my visit, I went to see the ‘Serious Fun Exhibition’ at the Daelim Museum. I thought there was a great match between the city and the Spanish designer.
It seems the love affair continues with the recent unveiling of two new lounges in Seoul’s most exclusive department stores.
Although the two venues were launched in February, Jaime Hayon could not be present until recently.
These two new lounges mark a further collaboration between Jaime Hayon and Hyundai, after the garden and the library at Hyundai Museum of Kids’ Books & Art (MOKA). The space encouraged and cultivated “Nature Literacy” in weary city-dwellers who rarely have a chance to appreciate the beauty of nature. MOKA Library housed over 2,000 nature-themed books.
Club YP @ Hyundai Seoul
For the lounges, the Spanish designer wanted to create something unique and artistic with a strong attention to details including the sensations you have inside the venues. And because the members are a young and sophisticated audience, the space had to be surprising, full of quality and abundant when it comes to culture, art and design. The VIP lounges needed to be desirable. It is like a secret space only accessible because of their unique status as preferential customers. The spaces speak about freedom and being open. It is a generation that wants to see and to be seen and hopefully these spaces provide a perfect setting for the experience.
The Pangyo Lounge
“Design is a melting pot of influences and experiences. With colour, materials, ceilings and light, we aimed to create a new type of space for the young users, from lounges to restrooms, each space provides a unique experience”. ‘I feel close to the generation the lounges are meant for. They are open to mixing and variety - transgressive in a way and this feels close to home for me.”
Jaime also connected with the Young Korean generations. With their sense of style and fashion, they often are avant-garde and try to things differently. It brings back the designer’s own youth when he was a skater and always looked at things in a fully fresh way.
Club YP @ Hyundai Seoul
Located at the Hyundai Seoul, the largest department store in Seoul City, in the Korean Wall Street, the venue serves as an exclusive club (around 300sqm) of the store’s young VIP members.
The Hyundai Seoul space has a subtle environment that plays with materiality, lacquer surfaces to create a soft feeling. It is probably the closest of the two from Jaime’s own personal style.
The lounge is entirely organic inside and feels dreamy. It has the softness of the Mediterranean expressed through the type of floor, through the roundness of furniture, to the roundness of sculptures, and everything that it's around Jaime, it surrounds and embraces you.
The Pangyo Lounge
In the Techno Valley, the Korean answer to ‘Silicon Valley’, this second location in the Pangyo department store, is around 300sqm. Here, members are welcomed in a space where technology is mixed with tradition, bricks with metallic surfaces, ceramics and sculptures made in fiber. Unlike in the Club YP, here the designer used vertical straight lines too, aligned with the choice of material: tiles, metal, wood and brick.
There is huge attention to details: from the handles to the lighting, from the surfaces, to the patterns, from the sculptures to the lighting, from the quality of elements, to the seating, from the colour chart, to the combination of places where materials meet.
Both lounges are a “jungle of ideas” where you can also spot some sculptures of animals (chicken, mouse, dinosaur…) used as lighting elements as well. The animal feature that becomes humanised create a new animal that links you to humankind. It part of the exclusivity and uniqueness of the spaces and connects with their audience.
Visitors will also notice the organic shapes of the venues. Jaime Hayon believes that they connect the human body and nature because they are kinder and smoother. Creating these spaces is like creating a painting, like a composition, I look at these spaces as a composition in which you're going to walk through. There needs to be risk and balance to the whole to the whole space. The patterns are also very important. They create a landscape depth, volume and texture
The doors have to be a very special feature. The Spanish designer created very unique doors for both spaces. The entrances, make you feel unique. The door is the access to another world and that's extremely beautiful. It is like walking into a channel that leads to another dimension. Every inch of the spaces is photographable - every angle could be something that it's actually an emphasis to strength.
“I think these two spaces are definitely the mirror of a new Jaime. Someone who is risking something, trying to find new codes without fear of the risk. I am in touch with my inner child in the way I just immerse myself into the experience, with all the senses lit to bring up the best they can”
