In Seoul’s serene Seorae Village—a rare Francophone enclave within the city—WARP AND WOOF's design for PINOCCHIO Gelato + Coffee Shop proposes an architecture of memory, warmth, and subtle community interplay.
Far from a generic dessert destination, this pocket-sized interior project invites quiet intimacy, where design gestures are tender, not declarative. The client’s nostalgic longing for the atmosphere of a cherished childhood restaurant served as the conceptual cornerstone, prompting the architects to approach the space with understated care.
Rather than relying solely on palette to conjure warmth, the studio employed indirect lighting, soft forms, and spatial choreography. A perforated facade lit from within spills a hushed glow onto the street, extending an unspoken invitation to passersby. The architectural detailing—rounded edges on door handles, furniture with no hard angles—draws from tactile memory and visual softness, an ethos more felt than seen. These elements resist the clinical precision often associated with contemporary design in favor of something altogether more human.
Space constraints encouraged compositional ingenuity. Diagonal furniture layouts replace rigid, linear ones, producing porous borders between resting, moving, and social zones. The slanted table, in particular, subtly disrupts conventional seating arrangements, making casual conversation inevitable rather than optional. There is a choreography to it—of gestures, glances, and proximities—that invites lingering without imposition.
Materiality further links the space to its architectural context. Instead of disrupting the area’s vernacular quietude, the design mirrors the texture and tone of the building’s aged brick shell. This isn’t about nostalgia in the Instagrammable sense; it’s about continuity, about folding into the neighborhood’s existing rhythms with quiet deference.
