Inside Gentle Monster’s Seoul HQ: Custom Metal Furniture by Tim Teven
Tim Teven brings sculptural metalwork to Gentle Monster’s new Seoul headquarters
HAUS NOWHERE SEOUL marks a significant expansion of Gentle Monster's spatial ambitions, a building where retail, workplace culture and brand identity intersect within a single vertical framework. While the public often experiences the company through its immersive installations and theatrical storefronts, the new office headquarters reveals a quieter layer of its design language.
The project was developed in collaboration with Korean architecture firm The_System Lab, which oversaw the building’s exterior, while IICOMBINED’s in-house design teams shaped the interiors. Their approach continues the company’s interest in narrative-driven spaces, creating a sequence of floors that shift between immersive installations and operational zones.
Workspace Furniture by Tim Teven
Dutch designer Tim Teven was invited to shape the furniture for the building’s seven office floors. Known for elevating metal deformation into a precise design methodology, Teven's design studio has built a recognisable vocabulary around pressure, bending and controlled distortion. At Haus Nowhere, this vocabulary was challenged to operate at a different scale and pace: not as limited-edition sculptural objects, but as the daily infrastructure for a global creative organisation.
Translating Sculptural Metalwork Into Workplace Function
Rather than softening his material language, Teven translated it. The deformation marks, compression lines and structural shifts typical of his work remain visible, but are embedded within pieces engineered for long-term functionality. The commission includes work desks, meeting tables and modular storage systems, that were adapted to meet the practical requirements of a large-scale office environment.
“We wanted to create furniture that feels special and tactile, yet works effortlessly in a corporate environment.” says Teven.
To achieve this, the furniture integrates cable channels, adjustable shelves and storage drawers, elements typically expected in corporate environments but here incorporated with minimal visual interruption. The metal components were produced using a combination of hand-finished techniques and detail-rich pieces, while reflecting the experimental language and surface expressions of Teven’s practice.
A Workplace as a Brand Interface
The results sit comfortably within the broader architectural narrative of HAUS NOWHERE. While the retail floors lean into spectacle and immersive installations, the workplace areas required a more tempered spatial language — one that supports the operational demands of a global company while maintaining a cohesive identity. Teven’s furniture provides this bridge: expressive enough to reflect the company’s experimental ethos, yet disciplined in structure and performance.
By situating an artisanal, materially driven practice within a complex organisational environment, the project underscores a wider shift in contemporary workplace design, where standardised systems are increasingly replaced by custom elements that express brand identity through form and fabrication. At Gentle Monster's headquarters, this translates into a series of office floors where the furniture contributes not only to daily workflows but also to the spatial narrative that unites the building’s multiple programmes.
Office Furniture: Tim Teven Studio
Venue: HAUS NOWHERE SEOUL
Architecture: The_SYSTEM LAB
Interior Design: Gentle Monster / II-COMBINED & Tamburins
Photography: MH Photography Mihyun Son