A collected café ‘MEMEMI’ from METROCITY have opened in the YONGSAN I-PARK MALL as the first independent store. ‘MEMEMI’ is the global café that started from Milano in Italy. It had been shown in the METROCITY lounge (at the LOTTE-WORLD MALL and STARFIELD HANAM IN SHINSEGAE DEPARTMENT) as a shop-in-shop café. A concept of the ‘MEMEMI’ in the YONGSAN I-PARK MALL is a ‘secret garden’ reminding of a boutique hotel in Milano. ‘MEMEMI’ is designed as a multisensory space that excites all five senses more strongly by adding to sensitive music and visual images.

Façade
A department normally makes many of hallways and brand-shops coexist in a big space. By thinking this space in the department as a load in Milano, we were trying to make a trendy dessert and fashion café that you came across, as you walked down the street. The façade features a classically reinterpreted design that accentuated sensuous pink-colored frame and neon signs that can catch your eye. A bottom fence of the façade is made with a laser-cutting technique unlike existing work method. Moldings on the windows, expressed by gold-sheets, and “MEMEMI” logos, attached on the windows, show that the history of the Metrocity who seeks neo-classic style is reflected.

Cafe
The inside space that is surrounded by the façade consist of another space. We get an inspiration from varied-space such as a garden in a boutique hotel, a lot of cafés and traditional houses in Milano. We make ‘MEMEMI’ own space, differentiated with other cafés, by combining the inspiration with house music and trendy music videos. A concept of the ‘MEMEMI’ is divided into an inside of the building and an outside of the garden. There are café hall and communication room that are composed of pink-colored arch wall in the building. The interior space is bounded with the exterior by green-colored tiles on the floor and pink-colored ceiling.

An inside hall that is made up of pink-colored tiles, furniture, a gold-colored pendant and a counter finished by marble is designed by motifs of lounge bars in the Milano’s hotel. So as to display a variety of desserts and snacks, the counter bar has two showcases and shelves. In addition, an upper storage is made on the shape of a shelf, having a concept of traditional Italy furniture, for presenting specially chosen merchandises. The communication room is designed as a differentiated space by using the green-colored, a colour for the main floor, on the wall and ceiling. Especially, we make this area special and private space by emphasizing classical elements by using moldings, mirrors as well as lightings and by disposing a soft velvet sofa and vinicolor curtain.

Garden
The garden, designed as motifs that are from hotel’s gardens in Milano and an inner court, is a space which is created as an outside garden. In order that you can feel you are in the outside garden, we hang the wall lamps on the partition walls that are made up two arch walls and lay the pattern tiles on the floor. In order to create an atmosphere of a garden, t
he main wall is composed in a form of a plant bed. The ‘MEMEMI’ logo of pink-colored neon sign that we consider as the stylish factor which can change the classical atmosphere to the trendy is installed on the center of this wall. The bottom of main wall in which plant bed is created is made as platform for being used as seats. We use the same marble-pattern-tiles with wall on the platform for giving sense of unity.

We are trying to emphasize garden’s originality, by so arranging outdoor tables and rattan chairs. The garden is a café space that people can enjoy drinking beverages and having desserts and an exhibition area that people can see a lot of goods from the ‘MEMEMI’. So as to be able to see the goods on display from the inside and the outside, we arrange bar tables and furniture along with the windows that adjoin the façade. Unique ornaments and sets of tables from the POLSPOTTEN, a home deco brand from Netherland, that reinterpret the classical to the funky are particularly selected for the café MEMEMI.

Designed by Design BONO
Client : METROCITY
Photography by Yong Jun Choi