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Design Details: A Comic Manuscript Backdrop at LEBOM in Seoul

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Welcome to Design Details, an ongoing editorial feature in Daily Coffee News focused on individual examples of coffee shop architecture, interior design, packaging design or branding. If you are a coffee shop owner, designer or architect and would like to submit your project for consideration, reach our editors here.

Design Details: LEBOM Cafe

Project: LEBOM Cafe
Location: Seoul, South Korea
Area: 225 square meters (2,422 square feet)
Completed: April 2025
Client: Lezhin Entertainment
Design and construction: Unseenbird
Lead architect: Bioh Seon
Design team: Yonghyeon Kim and Jieun Ko
Photography: Han Sunghoon

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Rotating partitions modeled after comic manuscript pages are designed to blur the lines between reality and fiction at LEBOM Cafe, a 2,422-square-foot cafe and event space in Seoul. 

Designed by Seoul-based studio Unseenbird for Lezhin Entertainment, the cafe was conceived as an adaptable backdrop for comic-themed pop-ups, signings and merchandise displays while supporting regular cafe operations. The layout periodically changes to accommodate different characters, stories and events.

Unseenbird approached the project by considering the increasingly fluid boundary between virtual experiences and everyday life. The studio pointed to the use of artificial intelligence, the popularity of avatar singers and the rise of augmented-reality games as examples of how virtual experiences have become embedded in daily routines.

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“How do people who like comics perceive comics in their daily lives?” Unseenbird said in a project description shared with DCN. “How far have they brought the subject into my reality? It is clear that they are keeping it much closer than just paper or screens.”

Because each pop-up introduces different comic imagery and merchandise, Lezhin Entertainment wanted the permanent interior to function as a flexible background.

“The entire space becomes comic manuscript paper, and here, characters and reality are mixed,” Unseenbird said. 

Large manuscript-page structures rotate like pages in a comic book. Open sections within the frames simultaneously capture comic imagery and views of the physical space beyond, bringing illustrated characters and customers into the same visual field.

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The movable structures can also serve as partitions, allowing the layout to change for events such as artist signings. Cross-shaped columns and overhead supports accommodate interchangeable signs, banners and other graphics while remaining permanent architectural elements within the cafe.

Painted surfaces, wood and stainless steel form a restrained material backdrop for the changing displays. Wood introduces warmth while the predominantly neutral framework allows each featured comic to establish its own visual identity.

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