TV cabinet – Cheeho Zeong , KKLEM
Television is commonplace these days. However, it was not until 1970s that actual production of television started in Korea and color television came into wide use not earlier than 1980. From then on Korea-made television has made remarkable development to boast a world-class level now. This project by art director Zeong and furniture maker/designer KIRHO from KKLEM (the furniture company) is a sort of paying homage to such a dramatic history of Korean television by retracing the course it has followed for half a century.
While Korea moved rapidly from an agrarian-based to a manufacturing-based to an information-based economy, a paradigm of design in the country also went through a radical changeover, at the center of which was industrial design, often represented by home appliances design. Korea’s consumer electronics design back in the 70s and 80s may look old-fashioned and even unsophisticated as we see it today, but it is the starting point and an important source for understanding, studying, and further developing the country’s industrial design.
On that account, in this project, up-to-date LED TVs meet a new, yet quite familiar TV cabinet, to which design elements found in the Seventies Korean television sets are applied. The moment when the old meets the new to create something entirely new.