In the burgeoning Seongsu neighborhood of Seoul, where industrial remnants are steadily giving way to fashion-forward enclaves, 032c has planted a flag.
The Berlin-based media and fashion entity has unveiled its first South Korean outpost, a hybrid gallery and retail space designed by the Berlin architecture duo Gonzalez Haase AAS. The project, launched in partnership with Musinsa, Korea's dominant fashion platform, signals not just a commercial expansion but a cultural incursion—an attempt to tap into what founder Joerg Koch deems the “holy grail” of fashion.
Far from a sterile brand transplant, the 032c Gallery Seoul reads as a site-specific intervention. Gonzalez Haase AAS has delivered a spatial experience that deftly channels Seoul’s pulse—both its restlessness and receptivity to the avant-garde. Their opening installation, Catastrophe Colours, occupies a dual-screen format, confronting viewers with chromatic studies drawn from the architects’ broader research on the semiotics of color in design. Here, color is neither decorative nor incidental—it is ideology rendered visible, filtered through a critical architectural lens.
The layout itself mirrors the dialectic between commerce and concept: a red-drenched exhibition zone nods to 032c’s Berlin storefront, while a pared-back retail section, partitioned with surgical precision, houses the label’s Readytowear collections by Maria Koch. This spatial choreography isn’t merely aesthetic—it constructs a rhythm of encounter, inviting Seoul’s fashion and design audiences into a dialogue with the 032c ethos.
More than a store, 032c Gallery Seoul aspires to become an anchor for a new cultural community. As Jihoon Lee of Musinsa noted, the gallery seeks to transcend fashion, carving out a niche where “diverse cultures can be experienced.”
