New Seoul City Design Chief Picks Up Brush
By Jane Han
Staff Reporter
Imagine having an entire city like Seoul as your canvas _ but it's already jam-packed. Tightly brushed across the board are mountains and rivers, skyscrapers and bridges that you have to work with. Either erase, redraw or alter them _ whatever it is, just make it pretty. What would you do?
``Leave it all. Seoul has a great mix of nature and modern look and has every potential to become a city with a one-of-a-kind design,' ' said space design professor Kwon Young-gull, who was named as the Chief Design Officer (CDO) of the ``Design Seoul'' division on Monday.
The special division was launched by Seoul City to facelift various visual aspects of the capital, having it compete with other ``beautiful'' leading global cities.
Being an industrial, environmental and space design professor for the past two decades, the 56-year-old Seoul National University dean says it's a great privilege to take on this role to beautify the city not only visually, but also in practical and health-friendly ways.
``The city's cultural richness should be played up a lot more than now because unlike many other major cities, Seoul boasts an extremely long history, which means there's much culture,'' said Kwon.
Along with added cultural bits, the newly appointed design officer said he plans on incorporating much Information Technology (IT) into the coming changes.
He pointed out that Korea's Hyundai cars and Samsung handsets are competing head-to-head in the world market, proving how advanced the country's industrial design is. But he lamented that equal skills aren't shown in the actual city scene.
``I want to narrow the gap between the country's technology and people's everyday living standards,'' he said.
Having traveled to about 370 cities in 50 countries, the new CDO says he has been amazed by some cities.
He listed Austria's Salzburg, Denmark's Copenhagen, England's Bristol and Brazil's Curitiba as the cities he admired most.
Salzburg is filled with green, Copenhagen puts heavy emphasis on the convenience of pedestrians and bikers, Bristol is a ``legible city,'' allowing walkers to carry a letter-size map and find their way around without a sweat and Curitiba _ both the city government and citizens _ make joint efforts to improve the environment, the professor said.
``Combining features from these four cities and incorporating them into Seoul is my plan,'' Kwon said. ``The city government has been working to make quantitative improvements for the past years, but it's now time for them to start working on the qualitative characteristics.''
The thing that must be changed as soon as possible, Kwon says, is the street signs all over the city.
``Right now, they come in all sizes, colors and designs and it really kills the city's image,'' he said. ``That has got to be worked on and it will be done.''
A guideline for street sign users will be sketched out and implemented within months to relieve the situation, the CDO said.
Among the many districts in Seoul, the design expert said each area is so dynamic that singling out one particular area as best or worst isn't easy.
``College district Sinchon and Hongdae are vibrant with energy and the streets show just that, while Bukchon is historically rich in scenery,'' he explained. ``They're all very precious with priceless value.''
The Pyongchang-dong resident said that he's happy with where he lives.
``There are lots of trees and green areas,'' he said. ``I'm hoping the entire city will soon be able to enjoy greenness no matter where they are.''