Sustainability here is not presented as an accessory virtue but as part of the project’s ethical grammar. The use of recycled rice husk wall panels embodies a cyclical sensibility that connects the space to Korea’s agricultural heritage while lending the walls a muted tactility. Equally, the ceiling becomes an architectural meditation on Korean wood joinery, its lattice framework revealing the discipline of traditional craft within a contemporary idiom. The interplay of light and geometry across these surfaces generates a sense of measured rhythm, an architectural calm that seems to breathe.

The lobby lounge draws on the typology of the Daechungmaru, the open central hall of the traditional Hanok house. Historically, it was a place of transition and welcome, where interior and courtyard merged. Here, that idea reappears as an open grid floor inspired by the Woomulmaru, and a ceiling that reinterprets the Woomul-Banja lattice. Lines intersect in quiet precision, giving the room an almost musical structure. At its centre stands a sculpture by Lee Bae, one of Korea’s most internationally recognised artists, whose ink-brushed forms distil the Korean virtue of modesty into pure material gesture.

Art flows through the project as both anchor and atmosphere. A large painting by Yun Hyong-keun, master of Dansaekhwa, deepens the foyer’s spatial gravity with its austere monochrome. In the corridor leading to the seminar room, a glass installation by Yang Yoowan hangs like suspended rainfall – an optical pause that shifts the perception of movement and depth. This curation does not seek to impress but to align art with the building’s emotional temperature: restrained, contemplative, exacting.

The rooms themselves – banking counters, counselling areas, a seminar and social room – translate domestic archetypes into a new typology of financial space. The corridor recalls the Toetmaru, a wooden veranda mediating between inside and out; the seminar room borrows from the elevated Numaru, a semi-loft for guests; the social room, in vivid red, reimagines the Sarangbang, the formal reception chamber of the Hanok. Each space is individual yet continuous, articulated through soft transitions, translucent partitions and quiet shifts in tone. Glass walls patterned after Jogakbo patchwork suggest intimacy without enclosure, while accents of Korea’s five cardinal colours – blue, red, yellow, green and purple – lend subtle distinction.

What makes Club1 Dogok remarkable is not its material richness or technical polish, but its refusal to treat luxury as spectacle. The design translates the choreography of hospitality – welcoming, guiding, offering – into architectural form. By adopting the spatial programming of hotels rather than corporate offices, the bank creates an atmosphere that values service as a cultural expression rather than a commercial one.

The site itself posed challenges: a compact volume with low ceilings, conditions that risked heaviness and compression. Kim and Studio Eccentric responded with horizontal layering, diffused lighting and a disciplined grid that visually expand the interior without erasing its intimacy. The resulting space feels balanced between gravity and lightness, formal dignity and domestic warmth.

In an age when finance increasingly dematerialises into screens and algorithms, Hana Bank’s Club1 Dogok restores the tactile, human dimension of the banking experience. It reframes wealth not as accumulation but as cultural sensibility – the ability to appreciate silence, texture, and craft. Here, luxury is no longer a matter of surface display but of cultivated restraint; not the performance of power, but the poetics of presence.