Spaces I Remember #7 — A Young Entrepreneur's Private Retreat in Hannam-dong
Spaces I Remember #7
Between Work and Rest — A Young Entrepreneur's Private Retreat in Hannam-dong
The first thing you notice is the height.
Many spaces have high ceilings. But the height here was not the kind that announces itself. Light moved slowly down the empty walls, and beneath it, the furniture sat quietly, each piece in its place.
This unit at Sounds Hannam in Hannam-dong was put together by a young entrepreneur who had built his career at the center of Korea's fintech and IT industry. It was not, strictly speaking, a primary residence. It was somewhere to come down from the pace — a private retreat within the city, used intermittently and deliberately.
In the living room, a Flexform Guscio sofa designed by Antonio Citterio. Its curved backrest wraps rather than supports — not a sofa for receiving guests, but for one or two people who want to settle in and stay a while.
This was not a reception room. It was a personal lounge.
The windows were large and held the sky. The view was not the Han River or Namsan — the more legible markers of Seoul luxury — but the light that came through changed through the day, tracing itself slowly across the oak floor. That was enough.
Along one wall, a Danish vintage teak desk and a Finn Juhl Model 108 chair.
For someone working at the intersection of technology and capital, the choice was unexpectedly analogue. No multiple monitors, no executive chair built to signal authority. An old desk in warm teak, a chair with a curved seat and light oak frame. A small task lamp. A few documents, arranged.
The work done here was probably not operational. More likely the kind that requires stillness — reading, deciding, sitting with something before returning to the company that generated it.
The dining area held a Rolf Benz 965 Solid Filigree table in walnut — wide but not heavy, its top thin, its underframe visually light. Two spherical pendants hung from the high ceiling above it. On the wall beside it, a large photographic print of the moon. The oval table, the round lights, the circular image: forms repeating quietly across the room, softening what the architecture — straight lines, dark kitchen wall, square windows — had made angular.
The bedroom was a different register entirely. The ceiling dropped. Timber panelling enclosed the space on both sides. Indirect lighting ran the length of the wall. The effect was horizontal, grounded, deliberately calm. Whatever the living room held in reserve, the bedroom let go of entirely.
What stayed with me was not the furniture itself — though each piece had been chosen with genuine care — but the consistency of the logic behind the choices.
An Italian sofa. A Danish vintage desk. A German walnut dining table. Different countries, different decades, nothing matching in the conventional sense. What connected them was material and line: walnut, teak, oak, leather, fabric. Thin legs, curved backs, restrained structure. No piece announced itself. Each one simply held its place.
This did not feel like a showroom. It felt like taste accumulated slowly, without urgency.
Someone who had built his career in one of Korea's fastest industries had chosen, for the space where he rested, the slowest materials he could find. Old wood. Curved forms. Enough empty floor to let the light move through.
The luxury here was not in what was present. It was in what had been left out — and in the discipline required to leave it out.
I have personal admiration for the man whose space this was. I will not write his name here. I hope only that the quiet he found in this place stays with him, wherever the road ahead leads.
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