Dr. Jart+ Flagship Store / Betwin Space Design

Curated by Fernanda Castro

Architects: Betwin Space Design 
Area: 109 m²
Year: 2016
Photographs:Yong-joon Choi
Manufacturers: Hankook, Seogwang
Constructor: Betwin Space Design, Cheon-ho Shim, Jae-young Lim

Text description provided by the architects. Dr. Jart+ has pursued a healthy beauty based on dermatology, inspired by art and culture. Dr. Jart+ diagnoses a phenomenon with the most rational and logical ‘doctor’s eyes’, suggests the true value and the way of beauty with emotional and flexible expression methods of ‘art’, and talks about ‘the healthy beauty’.

The space of Dr. Jart+ first built in Garosu-gil is named ‘Filter Space’ having the purest ‘water’, ‘air’, and ‘light’, which are 3 elements of the healthy beauty. Dr. Jart+’s first flagship store ‘Filter Space Seoul’ is where essential elements of the healthy beauty such as ‘water’, ‘air’, and ‘light’ can be experienced in the most refined form, and it is planned to be the cleanest and comfortable experience space in the environmental pollution which is getting worse every year.

The existing shape of the building is kept, placing a large air-conditioning system on the rooftop, and it is carefully designed to look like a piece of functional machinery connecting each floor with air ducts. It is also recognized as a filter covered with punched stainless steel plates during the day, while the shape and nature of the existing building are exposed at night, showing closely combined function of space and building. The air ducts covering the building can be explored in a staircase, which is one of the entrances into the new area of building so that the form of access to each floor allows ‘people’ as well as ‘air’.

On the ground floor, visitors can enter the space through an ‘air shower booth’ which is created to keep the space clean from the outside. By offering a ‘water bar’ which is available to have purified water, well known for the most fundamental element of the human body, people can begin their healthy beauty life with some suggestions of Dr. Jart+. Furthermore, a ‘life recipe’, the filter space has only, is special program. It prescribes considering not only customers’ skin condition, also mood and health, and then if visitors bring the prescription to a pharmacy booth, they can have some product samples and sweets related to their skin condition.