Seoul's largest architecture festival to enjoy extended run
A promotional poster for the 18th Seoul Architecture Festival / Courtesy of Seoul Metropolitan Government
The Seoul Metropolitan Government opened the 18th Seoul Architecture Festival (SAF) on Monday, expanding the event to nearly a month, from Tuesday to Oct. 11, at the Seoul Hall of Urbanism & Architecture in Jung District, central Seoul.
The festival, which showcases Korean architecture and lets residents engage directly with the field, ran for two weeks last year and drew 19,505 visitors. The city said it hopes to draw more than 40,000 this year.
This year's edition, "Assembling Seoul: Discovering Seoul," explores how Seoul's overlapping histories, places, cultures and people come together to shape the city today. It is organized around three concepts: hybrid density, rapid evolution and glocality — a blend of "global" and "local."
The centerpiece exhibit, "Discovering Seoul," is a collaboration between festival director Kook Hyoung-gul and photographer Shin Kyung-sub, who assembled recycled wooden pallets into a maze-like structure to display Shin's photographs of the city's architecture.
The festival also displays works by the winners of the 44th Seoul Architecture Awards. The grand prize in the completed-building category went to the Seo-Seoul Museum of Art in Geumcheon District, a media-art museum designed by architect Kim Chan-Joong of THE_SYSTEM LAB. In a new student category, the top prize went to a Hanyang University student's proposal for restoring and reusing parts of Seoul's centuries-old city walls.
Other programs include forums, talks by award-winning architects, walking tours of Seoul buildings and offices, an artificial intelligence-based architectural design course and career-mentoring sessions for young architects, held jointly with the Young Architects Forum Korea. Registration is available through the city's public reservation website, with details on the festival's website and its Instagram account.
"Architecture is an important cultural asset that shapes citizens' daily lives and the look of the city," Mayor Oh Se-hoon said at Monday's opening ceremony.
This article was published with the assistance of generative AI and edited by The Korea Times.