Sik Mul Sung

About this place

Sik Mul Sung (식물성, literally "of plant origin") is a café and concept store in Apgujeong, Gangnam-gu, designed by Seoul studio Unseenbird in collaboration with Layer Studio and completed in 2022. It was commissioned by N.Thing, an agri-tech startup that operates vertical farms on the outskirts of Seoul, as a public-facing demonstration of its indoor farming technology. The interior design by Unseenbird is built around the spatial drama of the vertical farm itself: a brightly lit, glass-fronted cultivation room occupies the visual centre of the space, where rows of vegetables — lettuces, herbs, microgreens — grow in hydroponic columns under LED lighting, without soil or natural light. When customers order, the vegetables are harvested from this room, processed immediately, and served as salads or incorporated into ice cream and other preparations. Food arrives at the counter via a conveyor belt that encircles the cultivation room and runs along the curved bar — a literal presentation of farm-to-table as spatial experience. The material palette was chosen to evoke N.Thing's stated ambition to build a vertical farm on Mars: large sections of wall, counter, and fixture are clad in stainless steel sheet; the floor is composed of small red pebbles and decorative red rocks; green perspex surfaces appear throughout. The effect is deliberately space-age and photogenic, with an underlying logic: the materials reference both industrial food-production environments and the imagined landscape of a Martian settlement. Textured plaster walls introduce warmth and contrast. Sik Mul Sung was shortlisted for the Dezeen Awards 2023 in the small interiors category and widely published in architecture and design media on opening. A second branch opened in Incheon in 2023. The Seoul location remains the design flagship.