One of the things I miss the most is the smell my neighborhood coffee shop entices with. While our lifestyle is returning to normal, I still don’t feel comfortable entering crowded places, including the aforementioned coffee shop. With the idea of a modular café – the designers prefer to call Oblige – we can decrease the load from our kitchen and get the best of what the café down the street promises. How do you ask? By creating one sleek appliance, you can easily install it anywhere in your home without worrying about connecting multiple power/water outlets to keep it functioning!
Meet the Oblige, an entertainment space where homeowners can depict their personal traits by customizing the modular appliance to their individual lifestyle or living space. The modular cafe intends to go beyond the idea of the basic functions the appliances in your kitchen perform. The designers behind Oblige feel setting up a café at home is inconvenient for now because it’s not easy to set up space with all the appliances required. Connecting them all to water and electrical sources is another headache. Simply thinking of brewing a good coffee – you need a list of appliances – from your coffee grinder, the pod-maker, espresso brewer, milk frother, and more, depending on your choice!
Oblige lets the user select and combine an appliance (ice maker, soda maker, water purifier, coffee grinder, espresso machine, kettle, and oven) as per their convenience and preference. If the need arises, users can combine more modules to cater to their extended demand while retaining visually similar aesthetics. These products club up together with a simple mechanism in the bottom; adding and removing them or installing the café setup on modular furniture outside the kitchen is feasible as Oblige will work on one power and water supply connection, irrespective of the interconnected modules needed in the setup.
If you’re looking to achieve a café-like experience, to quench the urge of working out of a Starbucks, an Oblige can really oblige you through the setup one day. It’s the designer’s vision to partner with furniture and lifestyle companies going forward to deliver, say, a LEGO-style modular café for your apartment someday.
Designer: Soo Jung Hwang, Seongyong Lee, Ki-Beom Hwang
