When we begin, our first idea is always the material.
Design is not about form or surface - it is about space and material.
Not the language of the designer, but the language of material itself.
Ultimately, materiality is what gives a space its voice.
MATERIAL LANGUAGE.
Rock -art stone-
This project introduces a barber shop into the ground floor of an old commercial building. Defined by vertical and horizontal lines, the structure symbolizes urban rationality, yet it is also a uniform box designed solely to function.
The project asks how a sense of freedom and natural presence can be restored within such a space.
As a reference, it draws on hikarizuke, an Edo-period carpentry technique that creates a subtle gap between a straight column and a natural stone, allowing light to pass through and soften rigidity. Could the strength and free, unshaped form of stone represent the spirit of today’s younger generation—unbound by fixed values and expectations?
Like a barber’s fade, which erases boundaries while revealing the character of the material, this sensibility is translated into space through organic, stone-like forms. The barber shop becomes a place that opens a new passage of light, where the sensibility of a new generation quietly inhabits the rigid box of the city.
