Cache Horie
Horie was once a flourishing district of lumber and furniture stores. Later, their former premises came to house an array of new businesses such as stores, cafes, and beauty salons.
Cache Horie branch is a pioneering and popular hair salon that used the features of its former warehouse site. The previous version of this branch featured a large chandelier and antique fixtures, and an efficient seating layout with set mirrors lined up around an expansive space. It had a striking spatial composition which made all its elements visible at once, as soon as one came in the door.
This partial remodeling, after the business passed to a new owner, devised a new composition to take advantage of the features of the main first floor, and to express evolution in the spatial experience. The cutting area was enlarged by extending a semi-private space out from the existing raised floor into the entrance area, producing a more relaxing space. Each seat on the main floor is laid out with ample space, and oriented to keep lines of sight from the various seats separate. The semi-private area blocks lines of sight from the street to its occupant. Seen in the context of the facade, it looks like a floating box and serves as a defining and eye-catching element.
The information counter consists of a 3-meter rectangle that straddles between the entrance area and the raised floor, generating a new rhythm with its visual buoyancy and its three-dimensional continuity toward the interior. Minimalistically abstracted elements and key colors create an intricate three-dimensional composition that contrasts with the rough structural frame of the original warehouse. Those elements include mirrors suspended from the steel frame using thin ropes and wires, cement cylinders and boxy counters arranged like toy building blocks, the mint green of counter tops, and the clay color of brickwork. This salon space has a lightness and a pleasant tension in a fitting expression for its new progress.