Bringing nature into home

Architect Kim Taek-soo’s collaboration with local kitchen furniture maker Nefs turns the kitchen into a space to grow, cook and eat vegetables. / Courtesy of Seoul Living Design Fair

By Park Jin-hai

Spring is the season for a total home makeover. On the tide of the growing DIY

interior trend, the 22nd Seoul Living Design Fair, which ended in Seoul Sunday,

was crowded with a record 270,000 visitors who wanted to pull up their sleeves and do some work with their own hands.

The five-day event, under the theme of “home curation,” featured some 300 interior design brands and nearly 370 designers displaying their work.

This year’s notable home interior trend was bringing green into the home.

In the designers’ choice section, where four designers presented their ideas of “homescape,” architect Kim Taek-soo’s collaboration work with local kitchen furniture maker Nefs stole the spotlight.

Casamia’s home gardening items transform every space in the house into a small garden.

The kitchen made of steel bars with green onions growing from an overhead compartment has been presented as a concept of “ki-dening,” where the cooking space was turned into a small garden for senior citizens who want to grow vegetables and then prepare and cook them in the same space.

“We wanted to put nature into the kitchen. It is a modern interpretation of the self-sufficient agrarian life of the past. Today, more people are growing their own vegetables and it has been reflected in our concept kitchen,” said a Nefs official at the exhibition. “We also wanted to show that gardening and cooking can be great activities for senior citizens.”

The moving steel bars on the kitchen wall also provide fun ideas such as transforming into a storage space where cups or magazines can be placed depending on how users move the bars.

Visitors try painting on the wall at Noroo Paint & Coatings’ booth during the Seoul Living Design Fair at COEX in Seoul on March 30.

Casamia, local interior designer and furniture maker, also showcased their ideas for modern green life.

Under the theme of “Pot-able Green Life” the furniture maker showed that plants can be great interior items to turn any room into an indoor garden.

The six different living spaces shown were full of green things with home gardening items including hanging plants.

“As more people want to relax with nature, the apartment with a separate terrace is gaining huge popularity,” said the event organizer Design House. “The indoor gardening market, in that sense, is booming too. The boundary separating indoor and outdoor spaces is now becoming blurred.”

Electronics companies also joined the nature trend. Samsung Electronics displayed its furniture-like wooden-framed Serif TV at the living design exhibition.

The Serif TV, showing how a high-tech electronics device can exist harmoniously with other furniture, shined under the limelight.

As the popularity of DIY interior rises, Noroo Paint & Coatings, which until now had not participated in the annual design fair due to its focus on business-to-business sales, devoted a corner where visitors could see various colors and shades of paint and try their paint-a-wall feature.

Choi Sun-hee, interior designer and CEO of FRDesign, displayed a concept living room for women in their 40s. The warm orange-and-red-hued living room under the theme of “Look-in Window” highlighted the importance of communication between family members. By placing a square table at the center of the living room and surrounding it with sofas, family members can sit closer to each other.

Industrial designer Choi Joong-ho showcased his concept bathroom for men in their 20s. Under the theme of “Romantic Holiday” the bathroom adopted hues of rose and blue to function not just as a bathing place but a fashionable place for young single men to spend time in. The living room with pink lounge chairs and a light grey day bed was separated with a pink glass wall, making it one large connected romantic living space.

“This year we saw more small and medium-sized manufacturers of designer products,” said Shin Seung-won, director of Design House. “The participation of material companies and designer home appliances as well as visitors’ increased attention to the use of colors in interior design is noteworthy.”