‘Boundary’ a cycle culture platform, opened on May 26 in Rodeo Street, Apgujeong District. Created in the partnership between JOH and le coq sportif, the place was named as Boundary, a place for brand new lifestyle breaking away from the routine of daily life.
What made you create a platform for cycle culture?
Customers in our time tend to focus on experience rather than possession of objects. Therefore, what we have to think about is lifestyle and the space that enables the experience of certain lifestyle. The boundary of lifestyles covers restaurant, café, interior styling, scented candles and bookstores. Recently, sport activities such as cycling, running, pilates and UFC are attracting people; especially, cycling is gaining more and more attention of trend-sensitive people while the cycling population in our country is increasing dramatically. Boundary started with a question ‘what kind of place do the increasing biker riders need?’ After we have visited many places frequented by riders, we realized that most of them focused on the bike itself rather than providing a room for riders to rest and enjoy nice food and beverage: Bikes were displayed at the center of the place, and most of the space are devoted to sell bike or accessories while feed zone for the riders were set aside in the corner of the shop. If you are not a bike rider, you may be hesitating at the door, thinking ‘is it a right place for me to go inside?’ Sometimes bike riders themselves also want to enjoy fine food and beverage in a stylish café: however, most of the ‘stylish’ cafés are not likely to allow customers in cycling wear and to acompany a bike inside. Therefore JOH decided to create a place that satisfies both those who ride bikes and who don’t.
What were your considerations to complement the shortcomings of existing bike cafés.
I’ve notices the features of the site where the Apgujeong flagship store of Le Coq Sportif had been located. The location is accessible for bike riders as it is only 3 minutes of riding from Hangang interchange. Another merits of the location was close to Rodeo Street crowded with shoppers of luxury fashion, while there are not many decent cafes around.
To focus the visitors’ attention on the entrance of Boundary, we set a wall in front of the parking lot and combined two driveway into one. Rather than a place open for everyone, we wanted Boundary seem like a hidden place that arouses curiosity and gives off its charms at the very entrance. Our intention to draw the passerby’s attention is more or less connected to the ‘unexpectedness’, the design concept of le coq sportif.
We had visualize the moment a bike rider decides to come inside Boundary and tried to understand the hesitation. He would be reluctant to wheel the bike into a café that is too much luxurious. If the floors are covered with spotless marble blocks, or the walls are painted in immaculate white, he might stop at the door for fear of tarnishing the clean interior with dirt from his bike wheels. However, if there’s a ramp that naturally leads to inside, his burden would be relieved a lot. After passing through a familiar hallway that gives enough room for both direction, the rider faces a town consists of four buildings in a huddle around the inner garden. The space inside Boundary are separated with different tones of interior as if they are on the different levels above the ground, yet they feel like a connected space with an extended sense of dimension.
What was your emphasis of the Boundary project?
After interviewing many bike riders, we understood some of their difficulties and decided to make a place to solve these problems. For example, riders who have high-end bikes tend not to leave their bikes outside for fear of being stolen. They feel comfortable if they can check if their bikes are safely parked while they are taking rests and enjoy beverage. Therefore we made parking zones at several corners inside Boundary.
Also, we provide a concierge care service with professional knowledge for cycling wear and cycle culture, which enables to provide fitting and repairing services. The most impressive feature for our fitting room is that we have a bike inside the room; above all, the cycling wear is clothes for riding bikes. The customers can check whether the clothes they’re trying on are suitable for riding bike inside the fitting room.
It seems that you have customers who don’t ride bikes.
Apart from the full-scale riders, some of our customers are urban riders who only ride on their way to and from work, and others are those who don’t ride bikes often. We have questioned ourselves what would be the common ground for our customers with different purposes, and the answer we’ve got was to serve nice beverage and delicious food. Whether they are bike riders, a shopper from Rodeo Street, or a resident of the town, they would like to have some relaxed hours with delicious food. Tribar, a casual juice bar at Boundary, is a branch of the headquarter store in Hannam-dong. Tribar at Hannam-dong is a place that tries to break away from the conventional image of juice bars that show off their healthier ingredients for well-being: Tribar is a place where you can enjoy fresh Bites (sandwiches), coffee, and tasty juice menus made of fresh grapefruits, apples, bananas, lemons, yams, melons and so on. The second Tribar at Boundary is equipped with specially developed menus that will be loved not only by the bike rider but also by every passer-by around the Rodeo Street.
The riders who just returned from the rider’ high, or are about to ride away, need food and beverage that satisfy their hunger and thirst yet don’t want to be loaded by heaviness of them. Menus of Tribar at Boundary consist of sandwiches to sate their hunger, energy drinks to satisfy the thirst And to provide strength instantly, handy energy bars made of rice, and the hand-made fruit jelly with soft mouthfeel. The space itself, too, might be attractive to our customers: we provide seats in various forms such as hammock, bean gags, standing tables, café tables, and benches and sofas taking account of various situations as well as the various numbers of the customers.
Boundary is the first collaborated project between JOH and le coq sportif; do you think the place is completed as you had intended?
Having been popular as a casual and fashionable sport wear brand, le coq sportif has been trying to regain its concept as a maker of professional sport wear. In fact, le coq had launched a cycle wear line before the opening of Boundary, as well as contributing for the nurturing of cycle culture serving as a major sponsor for Tour de Korea or opening bicycle classes. To present its philosophy embodied in a space, le coq decided to collaborate with JOH which works in various fields including brand consulting, space designing and F&B businesses. We hope Boundary to be a must-visit place among bike riders as well as a place to experience cycle culture for other customers. Both le coq and JOH are glad that a larger number of customers than expected have visited and enjoyed their time in Boundary.
In the end, a place should be designed for those who stay in that place, rather than for those who own the place. We’re glad now that Boundary is a place worth visit for both bike riders and every passer-by in Rodeo Street. A place no one wants to stay in is pointless however hard we Tried to make it nice with good intention.
- Client
- LE COQ SPORTIF
- Creative Direction
- JOH&Company
- Branding
- Brand Development – JOH&Company
- Space Programing – JOH&Company
- Verbal & Visual Identity Design – JOH&Company
- Graphic Design – JOH&Company
- VMD Planning & Design – LE COQ SPORTIF
- Signage & Environmental Graphic – JOH&Company
- Design &VMD Direction – JOH&Company
- Place Design
- Concept Design & Schematic Design – JOH&Company
- Design Development & Construction Documentation – J&Group
- Design Directing(on-site) – JOH&Company
- Lighting
- Lighting Design – JOH&Company, J&Group
- Furniture
- Furniture, Fixtures & Equipment Design – JOH&Company, J&Group
- Construction
- Construction – J&Group
- Photography
- Photography – JOH&Company, LE COQ SPORTIF
- Translate
- Translate – Byeol Song
