Burberry Busan Cafe

"Experiential space which offered a curated menu" - Chef Laubenuit

■ Client

↣ Burberry Busan Cafe

■ Type

↣ Culture

■ JMA+

↣ Interior architecture, design

■ Location

↣ Busan, South Korea

British heritage brand Burberry commissioned Julian McIntosh Architects to design their Thomas’s Café at the Ananti Hilton in Busan, South Korea. This first-floor experiential space was envisioned as a sanctuary offering a curated menu by Chef Laubenuit, designed to blend seamlessly with the ground-floor Burberry pop-up store also a JMA commission to create a unified and harmonious brand experience.

Our design process was deeply collaborative and iterative. We utilized advanced 3D modeling to develop finely tuned structural details, ensuring our proposals aligned precisely with Burberry’s rigorous aesthetic standards. The primary challenge of the project lay in reconciling the brand’s ambitious vision with the site’s constrained physical conditions, specifically regarding the integration of complex kitchen requirements and essential back-of-house operations.

The aesthetic of the café was centered on the TB Summer Monogram, a key feature of Burberry’s collection launch at the time. We reinterpreted this iconic monogram to create a sophisticated, modern environment that played with motifs inspired by the dramatic coastal views of the Busan hotel. This bespoke iteration of the TB Summer Monogram was applied across the entire site, weaving a consistent narrative from the outdoor terraces through to the refined dining and lounge areas.

Through a meticulous approach to detail and spatial planning, we successfully delivered a branded environment that felt both playful and inherently luxurious, perfectly capturing the intersection of high fashion and hospitality.