The 5th Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism opens on Friday September 26 at Songhyeon Green Plaza in the heart of Seoul. This will be Korea’s first large-scale, free, cultural event embracing mass citizen participation. Millions of people are expected to experience what has become
the biggest public architecture festival in Asia.
Under the curatorial guidance of Thomas Heatherwick, General Director of the Seoul Biennale, the event will explore how to make cities radically more human. The aim is to spark a public conversation about how to make the outsides of buildings better for people and the planet.
Over the course of 54 days, every citizen of Seoul is invited to come to the park and explore a 90 metre long, 4-storey-high structure called the ‘Humanise Wall’. This has been made of 1,428 steel tiles, inscribed with the creativity and insights of citizens, scientists, and designers. It features 400 buildings from 38 countries by 110 architects showing what interesting, joyful buildings can look like.
At its centre the Wall twists, forming a gateway that draws people into the debate, where the tiles are emblazoned with a manifesto setting out what people can do and ways to change our thinking.
The whole structure acts like an exhibition unrolled in the park, where you can spend 20 minutes or 2 hours examining each image and article. And like a good building it reveals more texture and detail the closer you get.
Nearby, a series of 24 ‘Walls of Public Life’ have been installed. These are giant fragments of buildings, 2.4m wide by 4.8m high, created by 24 design teams from across the globe, to show good the outsides of buildings can be.
The designers come from a vast range of creative and cultural backgrounds. Some have never made a building before. They include the Korean American chef, Edward Lee, the British fashion designer, Stella McCartney, a jeweler, a car manufacturing team at Hyundai, and two traditional building makers from Burkina Faso, alongside architects and engineers from India, Korea, China, Japan, the USA and Britain.
Thomas Heatherwick, General Director of this year’s Seoul Biennale, said:
“In a world where people are feeling stressed, divided and alone, we need buildings that bring us together and make us feel valued. This change will only happen when we all speak up. And the challenge now is to put architecture at the heart of public conversation in a way that nobody’s seen for generations.
“That’s what Seoul is doing here in such a bold and brilliant way. It’s demanding that cities should feel generous and full of character, built to be loved and last. This is based on a direct mandate from their citizens. New research shows that, despite most people feeling powerless, nine out of ten Seoulites say that building design affects how they feel and half of them want to get actively involved.
“For me, this Biennale is really an open-hearted invitation for people everywhere to dream more and demand better.”
After an opening ceremony led by the Mayor of Seoul, Oh Se-hoon, the opening weekend features a two-day global forum called ‘Emotional City’. This will gather more than 400 activists, academics and architects in a debate about the impact of building facades on public health and the launch of three new research studies from the Humanise Campaign.
The event features performances of newly commissioned dance, poetry and music, including work by the visionary choreographer Jinyeob Cha, plus a guest appearance by Emmy-award winning actor Lee Jung-jae, the leading star of Netflix’s hugely popular series, Squid Game.
Throughout the following two months of the Biennale, the public are invited to dive into four exhibitions running in and around Seoul’s Hall of Urbanism and Architecture, exploring the theme of making cities ‘radically more human’.
One showcases nine grassroots projects which have involved over 500 Seoulites exploring how the buildings in their city make them feel. Each project has made beautiful, challenging images and content that conveys how they would like the buildings in their city to change.
Another is a global participatory event where everyone becomes a maker of the exhibition, called ‘Emotionally yours, Seoul’. The event invites the public to submit photos and feelings evoked by the outsides of buildings, which are then woven into a single collaborative digital artwork made of facades and emotions.
These will run alongside “The City’s Face” which uses 25 projects from 21 cities to explore the potential for human-centered architecture, and “From a Bird’s Eye to the Human Eye”, which presents a series of 18 new buildings and spaces set to define the future of Seoul, seen up close through
the perspective of atmosphere and experience.
Chang su Lim, Director General of Future Urban Spaces Planning Bureau, the Seoul Metropolitan Government, said: “The Seoul Biennale is a festival that makes the city more attractive and livable through the perspectives and participation of citizens. We look forward to a shared experience of walking, observing, and envisioning the future of our city together.”
Photo by Yongjoon Choi