We are pleased to share the highlight video of the 2025 Seoul Design International Forum (SDIF 2025), held on September 19, 2025 (Fri) at the Multipurpose Hall of Seoul City Hall.
Under the theme “Attractive City of Seoul: Designing a Better Global Life,”
global design experts gathered to share insights and discuss Seoul’s design vision and future.
Relive the inspiring moments through this video.
Policy direction identified from the analysis of the diffusion process of Life Safety (Crime Prevention) Design
The anonymous cities that we have been building allowed us to have maximum freedom and make various choices, however, inappropriately, the cities have mercilessly reduced many alternative choices such as collective community action that were available in the past. Only for the limited purpose of reviving the collective environment, physical design of living environment must be used.
2023 Seoul Design International Forum 'Seoul Mind Garden Guro Family Counseling Center where you can take care of a healthy mind'
Hello, I'm Lee Ju-young, and I'm a supporter of the 2023 Seoul Design International Forum. Today, let's check what Seoul Design is and the Mind garden that applies Seoul Design with me. What about Seoul Design International Forum? The Seoul Design International Forum is held every year. The 2022 Seoul Design International Forum held last year was a forum under the theme of "Design x Seoul: How Design Enrichs the Future." Through various urban examples, we were able to learn how design can be combined with municipal areas such as welfare, culture, and transportation. The 2023 Seoul Design International Forum "Humanizing Cities: Human, Design, City" is with global designers, architects, and experts, you will be able to learn about the role of public design as an "urban alchemist" who can promote new experiences in the public realm, create memories, and even drive the city's competitiveness through collective memory.
Good Environments Make the Youth Emotionally Healthy
“Social problem-solving design” that changed our everyday life — youth problem-solving design The social problem-solving design project of the SMG that began since 2011 has undergone a transition from a “policy-centered” design to a “human-centered” design by proving its effects and receiving the attention of residents. Accordingly, the SMG started the design project in 2014 to solve problems faced by the youth, such as school violence, emotional anxiety, digital dependency, and peer relationships. The first step was the school violence prevention design project which sought points for improvement by analyzing various causes of school violence. The project name was changed to youth problem-solving design in 2018 as its scope has been expanded from school violence to other youth problems that are regarded as social issues. In particular, the necessity of the project emerges from the fact that problematic behaviors of the youth are worsening in terms of the quality and diversifying in terms of the types and targets. There is an urgent need for a solution that considers the developmental stage of the youth and regional characteristics. The youth problem-solving design project of the SMG will be examined by focusing on six representative cases of youth problems.
Reflections on Our Urban Design Efforts for the Post COVID-19 Era
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic is presenting new challenges to the world. According to the official statistics of the World Health Organization (WHO), there are currently 42,966,344 confirmed cases and 1,152,604 deaths in 219 countries and territories. In Korea, the cumulative number of confirmed cases has reached 26,043 and the death toll has reached 460. Although there are still many difficulties in our society, the response method to COVID-19 is receiving relatively positive evaluations. Quick epidemiological investigation, centralized administrative processing, and flexible financial management are frequently cited as the success factors of the so-called “K-Quarantine”. Planning and collaboration with the private sector, rigorous contact tracing, a flexible health system and government-led communication are key factors in controlling the coronavirus. The central government shows strong leadership and works closely with local governments and private organizations to carry out tasks quickly and efficiently. Our society and bureaucratic organizations are very accustomed to this, and perform effectively. This leads our city, which was built in a top-down, large-scale development method in an era of rapid growth, to reflect on recent urban design efforts that seek design solutions in a bottom-up, resident-participatory, small-scale regeneration method from a different angle. The so-called 'slow & bottom-up' discourse of 'step by step led by residents' in various similar project sites of the government that has changed names over the past 20 years was a very difficult investigation to realize. A number of projects such as living soc, smart city, and green remodeling are still being carried out rapidly under the leadership of the administration. As confirmed by the success factors of K-Quarantine, among the things our society is good at and can be proud of, is a quick and efficient administrative system led by the government and a fast space solution led by experts. What compromises must be sought to paradoxically establish a new, time-consuming, participatory urban design approach while taking advantage of the fast solution finding and implementation of the central government-led top-down system? The successful experience of K-Quarantine is something to be thankful for, but it is inevitable that attributes such as strong administrative power, promptness, control, and personal sacrifice collide with various basic values such as democracy and human rights inherent in resident participatory urban design planning. How can you mediate such aspects? We try to find answers to these questions.
City Desgin as Investment in the Future
Welcome, I’m Oh Se-hoon, the mayor of Seoul. It is my great pleasure to be here at the Seoul Design International Forum. I would also like to express my gratitude to the speakers. Today, I would like to focus on ‘urban design.’ Design is capable of creating values. And cities must be able to offer values to their residents. When cities have values, they become more competitive and provide a happy, fulfilling life. Therefore, design is a key tool that drives cities’ competitiveness. A city is our legacy for generations to come as they pioneer into the future. Given this, urban design is an investment for the future.
Universal Design Development Direction
Jongno Welfare Center for the Disabled opened in June 2012 and the building has four stories. The cneter has a higher proportion of the deaf and visually impaired users than other welfare centers, as the 100-year-old Seoul National Blind School and the Seoul National Agricultural School are right next to it. In addition, according to the user distribution survey in 2013 showed that users were distributed evenly from children to adults. In this discussion, the six construction guidelines for welfare centers are explained, and you can see how carefully they thought about them.
The Process and Outcomes of the COVID-19 Design Challenge
Insights and Applications for the Post-Corona Era; The start of a design challenge related to COVID-19 Design has great power. Design has the power to motivate people to do many things, such as taking action, creating products and services that make life simple and rich, and deriving a whole new experience. Designers basically carry out design work assigned to their organizations, but in addition to these daily tasks, they have the power to solve the world's biggest problems. I expressed these ideas in the keynote speech last August at the Design for America Summit, where I urged designers to solve the biggest challenges facing the international community through a bold approach. And it wasn't long before the COVID-19 virus outbreak, which had effects worldwide. I thought that there must be a solution that designers can bring to meet the huge challenge of the Corona crisis. After discussing how we should contribute to this challenge by making a difference together with like-minded people like World Design Organization’s Srini Srinivasan and Rebecca Breuer and Liz Gerber of Design for America, we decided to launch the COVID-19 Design Challenge and bring the designer community together. Our starting point was to reach out to designers in each community and ask them what challenges they might face with COVID-19. Altogether, there were over 180 challenges, and they were recorded on Post-it notes and categorized according to themes. We grouped the related ones together and marked them on the priority grid in order of high impact and urgency, considering whether it is a task we need to address, what impact it will have, and whether it can affect urgency and resolution.
Public design to enrich people's lives
The design for human life requires insights into intrinsic values. To fulfill this mission, the GK Design Group, which consists of companies specialized in 12 diverse fields, has operated as a comprehensive design creative group celebrating its 70th anniversary this year. With six offices in Japan and six overseas, a diverse and devoted group of 200+ designers with creativity and expertise are teaming up in a total of 12 bases and cross-functioning on different projects with their corresponding design capabilities to provide comprehensive design. Since urban environment design involves many more elements to consider than other areas, we carry out urban environment or public space design projects by collaborating on six areas: product, transportation, environment, communication, design strategy, and engineering to create integrated values and design.
[Special Interview] Prof. Dr. Peter Zec
As someone currently traveling across Asia, could you share your thoughts on what you find most inspiring about Seoul’s design compared to other cities in the region? I think Seoul has developed very strongly in the last decades and I would compare the designers from Seoul and from Korea with the designers from Italy.
SMG Universal Design
Until now, the public sector has prioritized efficiency enhancement through ‘standards’ in terms of service provision. Today, we are rapidly moving from mass production from the perspective of suppliers to the era of small batch production from the perspective of consumers. Because it is a smart era armed with various information and technologies, the standard framework alone cannot satisfy the diverse needs of citizens or lead to an affluent life. At this point, we need to think about who public design is for. WHO; Who is Universal Design for? Citizens who do not have disabilities and are still young do not feel the need to be specially considered by someone in their daily life. However, according to statistical data, the rate of congenital disability is only 5%, and temporary or situational disability that can be experienced in daily life accounts for a much larger proportion than permanent disability. Therefore, when we consider universal design in the public domain, we need to approach it from the perspective of various lives and situations, rather than looking only at people with disabilities. The diversity of physical conditions such as height, strength, dexterity, balance, attention, etc., the difference in language ability based on language and expressive power, the difference in sensory ability such as hearing, sight, and touch, and the difference in cognitive ability such as comprehension and intellectual ability that should be consideredSEOUL DESIGN INTERNATIONAL FORUM 2022
SEOUL DESIGN INTERNATIONAL FORUM 2022
Universal design that makes life easier for citizens
Design is an essential tool for making life easier for citizens. Good design eliminates user discomfort and this is a quality that applies equally regardless of the presence or absence of a disability. Therefore, I think universal design is a design that considers the needs of all people. The Seoul Metropolitan Government has been pushing for UD guidelines since 2010 for facilities for teenagers, the elderly, the disabled, and children, who are various users of welfare facilities, and has been consulting actual welfare facilities with these guidelines.