Student Jihyeon Park won the LIV Hospitality Design Award for Emerging Interior Designer of the Year for Limen, a place where time stands still.

Designed to be built in a repurposed historic train station, Limen “merges past and present by creating a surreal, twisted time-space.” If I could have my wish for Valentine’s Day, it would be to meet here—whether in dream or reality is of little importance!

Park, a Spatial Experience Design student at Art Center College of Design, combined the nostalgic beauty of train travel with fairy tale cobblestone floors, velutinous velvet seating, numinous vaulted ceilings, radiant Art Deco motifs, futuristic bath houses, and botanical dining rooms.

The impossible combination of allusions demands a new conception of nostalgia. I see influences from diverse films: Hugo, Paddington, Blade Runner, The Shinning, and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.

Limen is a liminal space, existing in exquisite suspension: between past and future, intrigue and danger, ecstasy and torment. Park describes it as a place where “guests feel like they are moving through a beautifully frozen moment.”

While Limen is perfectly decorated, it retains the quality of being abandoned. It remains uninhabited, except perhaps by ghosts who wander its spaces unseen.

For more information on the LIV Hospitality Design Awards, see their website.