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Talks
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SDIF 2024 Main Event <Reflections on Prof. Dr. Peter Zec's Keynote Speech>
Hello! I’m Seo balgeum, a supporter of the 2024 Seoul Design International Forum (SDIF). Have you heard of the Seoul Design International Forum? It’s an annual event hosted by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for all citizens through thoughtful design policies. These efforts continuously shape both the present and future of Seoul. This year, SDIF 2024 was held at Art Hall 2 of the Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) under the theme: “Designing the City of the Future.” -
Better Cities through Design to Improve Life
The Index Project was started in 2002 to educate and encourage people worldwide to draw sustainable solutions to global and social issues. Design and design processes engage in improving the quality of our lives and the community. The project is based on a “design to improve life,” a concept that has been mentioned since 2002. Thus, we take a user-centered design approach and consider their impact on sustainable society, economy, and environment. -
[Panel Discussion] Discussion by Pre-submitted & On-site Question
[(Chair) Joo Yun KIM] My questions are finished, and we received many from the participants. We can’t take them all, so I’ll ask one per speaker. First, CEO Helle Søholt: Jan Gehl’s urban-design principles suggest ways to create cities that attract citizens. If Seoul’s public design is to become something that truly makes people say, “It’s livable and I’m proud of it,” what one thing should we especially prioritize?
Interview
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Special Interview: Rico Quirindongo
As civil servants, our responsibility is to serve the needs of our cities, our citizens, and our diverse communities. To improve the value of our cities and lives of our citizens through design, we must start by listening to our communities, particularly marginalized communities of color, hear from our citizens what they need to be supported, how they can be uplifted, and how they have been underserved. That input and education needs to be institutionalized and iterative. With that data and interaction, city governments should use that information to inform and coordinate our infrastructure and capital investments, our placemaking efforts, and our policy decisions. -
[Special Interview] Deana YU
Q. In what areas does the NYC Service Design Studio work and which departments do you mainly collaborate with? Could you share one project that was most memorable for you? At the Service Design Studio, we kind of work like a city agency but we're a consultancy. So, we work with many different city agencies to improve their social services using service design. And as a consultancy, I get to work with a lot of different partners and one of those is the Department of Social Services, which is, I believe, one of the nation’s biggest social services departments. They administer so many social services like housing. And in particular, we partnered with them on the CityFHEPS Program, and we helped create flyers and sort of assets and tools that they can use to talk to people about programs. So we worked with them, and we conducted interviews to think about how can we make these fliers accessible to the people that are going to read them. Using pictures, icons, graphs, things to communicate really complicated New York City policy. -
[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.