The 5th edition of the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism will explore how to make the city ‘radically more human’. Running from 1 September to 31 October 2025, the event will invite Seoulites to join a city-wide public conversation about:

• how buildings make us feel
• the impact of the outside of buildings on the passers-by
• the importance of visual complexity for our health and wellbeing
• creating buildings that are loved and last, instead of being demolished and rebuilt

Founded in 2017, the Seoul Biennale is a testbed for exploring fresh solutions to some of the most compelling issues facing major global cities today. So far, it has involved nearly 3 million people in four editions over the last seven years. The 5th edition will be curated by Thomas Heatherwick, who was appointed General Director of the 2025 Biennale by Mayor Oh Se-hoon.

The 2025 programme will explore how to make buildings and cities radically more joyful and engaging, channeling the city’s ambition for a human-centered, climate-friendly future. This theme will be brought alive through a dramatic new public installation and a programme of events and activities.

The public installation will represent a large-scale Jogakbo tapestry, stitching together the experience and ideas of citizens and designers. An Open Call for Entries launches today inviting creatives from any discipline to apply to work with communities in Seoul and produce an image or artwork that expresses how the buildings make them feel.

10 creatives will be appointed to work with 10 communities on this brief for a period of 4 months. The artwork they produced will then be woven directly into the Jogakbo and bring the voice of citizens centre-stage throughout the Biennale.

Full details are available on www.seoulbiennale.org. The deadline for submissions is 2 February 2025.

The theme for the Biennale has been captured in a new logo, designed by Uncommon Creative Studio, which is also unveiled today. This is inspired by the simple idea that we should take time to look at the city and ask how the buildings make us feel.

The logo comprises a hand drawn sketch of the Hangeul characters for Seoul. Within the characters there is an eye, which represents individual people looking at their city. As it blinks, the logo invites you to open your eyes, have an opinion, and be part of a global conversation about how to make buildings more joyful and engaging.

Responding to the announcement, Thomas Heatherwick, said:

“Cities are the greatest monuments to our species. They’re what you see of us from space. But today, many have become ugly and expensive, scarred by an epidemic of loneliness. This is a genuine crisis for humanity and the way we design the outside of buildings is a huge part of the problem. It profoundly affects our mood, emotions and behaviour.

The science shows that boring, soulless buildings are bad for our minds, bad for society, and bad for the planet. That’s why we need a new approach to architecture. One that puts human emotion centre stage.

Seoul is the perfect place to take up this challenge. The city is an amazing creative powerhouse. It’s changing and evolving, looking forwards with a confidence and ambition that many other cities lack. It has emerged from years of rapid development and today is transforming into a richer, softer, more dynamic place. There’s now a dialogue of old and new that reflects people’s fondness for tradition as well as their passion for the future.

In this Biennale, we are going to escape from the tired conventions of traditional events locked away in a conference centre, and start a big conversation with the public as well as the professional community. We want to get to the heart of what matters to people in Seoul and help make this city – and many others – radically more human.”

Han Byung-yong, Seoul’s Deputy Mayor of Housing Policy Office, stated, “We are excited to see how Thomas Heatherwick, who focuses so much on how buildings give back to society, engages with citizens to shape the 5th Seoul Biennale. By collaborating with creatives across a huge range of disciplines, we aim to deliver a festival that many more citizens can enjoy and experience.”

The Seoul Biennale will also host a global forum in September 2025, gathering many of the leading designers, developers, and neuroscientists from around the world to debate the public health and environmental benefits of radically more human buildings.

More details will be published in due course.