Gyeonggi-Do, South Korea
NONSPACE Café was designed to regenerate the South Korean village of Icheon, which is renowned for its rice and flower farming. The project’s architects, On Architects Inc., wanted to breathe a new life into the village by proposing an experimental cross-cultural facility that enables cultural interaction.
NONSPACE Café has been awarded a 2023 International Architecture Award from The Chicago Athenaeum and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
The topography of the rural area of Icheon is full of rice paddies surrounded by a landscape of low hills and the project site had been used as a reservoir for rice farming but some time later became a fishing spot.
The client, Withheld, wanted an architectural space that could revitalize the rice-farming town’s community which has been aging, while celebrating the different aspects of the local culture.
NONSPACE Café’s minimalistic concrete structure appears out of space, yet it manages to encapsulate many elements of the local tradition. For instance, in the interior, the exposed concrete with the rice straw intends to create the impression of a straw-woven interior.
Depending on the occasion, it can hold various activities indoors and outdoors such as exhibitions of painting, sculpture, and ceramics; fashion shows; book concerts; the River Market; meditations; flower shops; art classes for children; and pop-up stores.
The architects wanted to make NONSPACE Café a multisensory architectural experience and for the visitors to feel the changing sky and wind, and sense the existence of water through the gap in the floor.
Architects: On Architects Inc.
Lead Architect: Jung Woongsik
Design Team: Kim Nam Su
Client: Private
Photographers: Yoon Joon Hwan
