DEMER Coffee Roasters has unveiled its third location in Busan, nestled near the bustling Busan Station in a district dense with office buildings and daily commuter traffic. Designed by the emerging Seoul-based studio "design by 83," the 96-square-meter café opened in early 2025 and represents a thoughtful meditation on light, memory, and urban solitude. The project builds upon the success of DEMER's second branch near Jungang-dong's iconic 40 Stairs, further developing the brand's distinctive design language rooted in maritime imagery. Photographer Donggyu Kim captured the space, highlighting how the architecture transforms throughout the day as natural light shifts across its carefully chosen materials.
The café's name derives from the French phrase meaning "of the sea" or "from the sea," inspiring designers to translate oceanic qualities into architectural form through the medium of light. Principal designer Minseok Kim and his team began with a poignant question: "Could a space hold on to its warmth even after everyone has gone?" This inquiry emerged from observing how the vibrant street empties dramatically after office hours, leaving behind what they describe as a "lingering sense of emptiness." The resulting design concept focuses on capturing moments like warm light sinking beneath cold shadowed waters or shards of illumination scattering across rippling surfaces, aiming to preserve emotional warmth within physical space long after customers depart.
The exterior facade combines white-toned mosaic tiles with a special paint finish, creating a crisp, clean canvas that emphasizes the illuminated DEMER logo. The designers deliberately chose elongated rectangular mosaic tiles whose concave surfaces catch and reflect light, suggesting the shimmering surface of the sea. This horizontal alignment flows seamlessly from exterior to interior, where epoxy terrazzo flooring in custom-mixed colors continues the visual narrative. The entrance features a minimalist flat metal handle sized precisely for a single palm, eliminating the common confusion of whether to push or pull while encouraging a more intentional, refined interaction with the threshold.
Inside, the spatial experience centers on a striking Barrisol lighting fixture suspended above the main bar, designed to evoke light filtering through ocean depths. This luminous canopy radiates soft glow downward and sideways, subtly highlighting the barista's workspace as the heart of the café. The bar itself pairs acrylic with Jesmonite on its front panels, creating a surface that suggests the sea holding light within its layers. Satin acrylic adds depth and nuanced vibrancy, while metal finishes on adjacent areas emphasize professionalism and grounded presence. The overall color palette maintains a consistent white base like previous locations, but layers paint finishes, wood veneer, and epoxy terrazzo to create rich textural depth within a single tonal range.
Construction manager Chanun Park explains that every material choice serves the concept of embedded warmth. The epoxy terrazzo floor contains fluorescent chips that capture and hold light, metaphorically storing the day's emotional energy. This detail physically manifests the designers' goal of creating a space that "exhales gentle warmth even in its most silent hours." The linear, rectilinear forms throughout the interior deliberately avoid curves, allowing the flowing light itself to become the primary source of organic movement. By day, the café serves as a bright, energetic hub for commuters, but its true design ambition reveals itself in the quiet evening hours when the embedded light and thoughtful materiality create an intimate, contemplative atmosphere.
The Busan Station location positions DEMER as a growing force in South Korea's competitive specialty coffee scene, where design increasingly distinguishes brands. The project reflects broader trends in Korean café culture, where spaces must function as both quick-service stops and lingering community hubs. For design by 83, this commission demonstrates their ability to translate poetic concepts into tangible spatial experiences that resonate emotionally with users. As DEMER considers future expansion, this third branch establishes a mature design vocabulary that balances brand identity with site-specific storytelling, offering a model for how retail architecture can respond meaningfully to urban context and human psychology.
