South Korea’s largest credit card issuer Hyundai Card has opened a library dedicated to design in Gahoe-dong, Seoul.
Named the ‘Hyundai Card Design Library’, the building houses 11,678 books—with selections chosen by an international team of curators and critics.
The team includes MoMA curator Paola Antonelli, New York architecture and design journalist Alexandra Lange, and British critic and Golden Lion-winner Justin McGuirk, according to Dezeen.
Dezeen also noted that “more than 7,000 of the books on the library’s shelves aren’t available anywhere else in South Korea, and over 2,600 of them are either out of print or very rare”.
Designed by Choi Wook of One O One architects, the design library also has a café and an exhibition space; a reading and discussion area on the second floor, which contains a large steel table; and a small attic-like space on the top floor, inspired by reading rooms in Korean palaces where princes took solitude to quietly study.
Hyundai Card Design Library can only be accessed by the company’s credit cardholders and their gusts, a maximum of eight times each month.
[via Dezeen]