Division of Communication and Media

Is there a place that is not home but makes you feel comfortable?

 

We live at home and school or home and workplace every day, but these are not the only two spaces we need. Our lives would be very bleak if we only went back and forth between home and work. Accordingly, we need “a third space” to enrich the simple daily life of home and workplace. “A third space” is a concept introduced by American sociologist Ray Aldenberg, where the first place means home and the second place means work, and the third place refers to a place that connects people and creates new interactions. In other words, in a space between home and work, people feel a sense of stability and fulfillment of their desire to communicate with others. Cafés are the most representative “third space.” Cafés are not just places to sell coffee. Cafés are not homes or workplaces, but third spaces, and serve to connect people and create various interactions.

 

I love going to cafés. First of all, I prefer sweet drinks and lattes to rice, and I like the coffee aroma provided by cafes and the warmth of the music. And you can sit in a cafe and think, plan, write a diary, or do a lot of things on your laptop. I cannot concentrate on work or studying at home because I feel like home is a place to rest. Above all, the reason why I go to the cafe is because of the white noise. In the reading room, library, or study cafe, even a soft clicking sound of the ballpoint pen should be very careful. Rather than studying, I concentrate on trying not to speak out loud. However, in a café, I can control my space.

 

This class of people like me is often referred to as the ‘coffice’. A combination of the words ‘Coffee’ and ‘Office’ refers to ‘people who work or study at a coffee shop.’ As more and more people study at cafes, there is also a research result called the “Coffee House Effect.” The cafe is on the border between private and public spaces. People can concentrate best when they can control the space, but it's much easier to get immersed in the cafe because they can listen to music with earphones on if they want to be alone, raise their heads if they want to see, and talk on the counter. That is why people are looking for cafes.

 

As the number of ‘coffice’ people increases, many people take this seriously. The cost of a cup of coffee is to use the cafe for too long to harm the shopkeeper. In fact, some college students at Starbucks stopped studying for a while and left their bags and books for dinner. When you use a café to study, you would better keep that in mind not to say anything about being loud to people around you and not to get many seats by yourself, not to stay long at a small cafe, and order more if you have to stay for a long time. It's not that hard to think about what I would be like if I were a coffee shop owner or another customer. In this way, we can keep etiquette and enjoy ‘coffice’ culture healthily at the third place, café.

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