Seoul Metropolitan Government and the Seoul Design Foundation held the DDP Spring Festival to celebrate Family Month on the 10th anniversary of DDP's opening. To mark the DDP's 10th anniversary, this festival held over 30 various programs, including a design animal playground, character parade, and grass hill concert, under the theme of ‘Design Zoo’, an animal-free zoo. It was very popular among citizens, with a turnout of 250,000 visitors who withstood the rainy, inclement weather. During the festival period, there was an average of 62,000 visitors per day.

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To mark the 10th anniversary after DDP's opening, the Seoul Design Foundation selected <Amazing Tomorrow> as its new slogan. A slogan declaration ceremony and forum were held at DDP Design Hall on April 26, 2024.
The new slogan, ‘Amazing Tomorrow (future)’, replaces ‘Dream, Design, Play’, which has been used for 10 years since the venue opening in 2014.
‘Amazing Tomorrow’ captures the ambition to deliver an experience that will pleasantly surprise future citizens and foreigners through the DDP, which showcases a future-oriented building design resembling a spaceship, cutting-edge construction technology, and content.

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To mark the 10th anniversary of the opening of Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP), various DDP birthday celebration events were held for four days starting on March 21, 2024. Congratulatory visits and greetings from 218,265 citizens in all took place at the 10th anniversary event of DDP held over four days. Various events were held at DDP on its 10th anniversary.

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The Seoul Design Foundation published a white paper, , which contains examples of applying design to various facets of daily life. It is part of a project launched by the Seoul Metropolitan Government and the foundation to create a ‘sustainable and happy daily life in Seoul. This information book contains daily life in the design city of Seoul, from cases of addressing social problems through design to upcycling design practiced alongside families in everyday life for a sustainable Seoul.

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The main content of Seoul Light DDP Winter 2023 is Digital Atlantis by Giantstep. The festival invites citizens to its design journey searching for the order in nature and people. On every hour between 6:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m., Digital Atlantis shows the great nature with breathtaking details such as the deep sea, dense forest, high rocks, and waterfalls and digitalized cities for 10 minutes.

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The exterior wall of DDP consists of 45,133 aluminum panels with varying shapes. DDP 45133 is a project that issues NFTs, adopting the concept of digital canvas on 45,133 silver exterior panels covering DDP. NFTs will be issued in three stages starting December 21, 2023.

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Seoul Universal Design Award is a contest that seeks to expand social awareness and bring more happiness to our daily lives free of discrimination and to make people-oriented cities where every person is respected. Celebrating its third anniversary in 2023, Seoul Universal Design Award presented exceptional universal designs in four categories (Environment Creation-Public/Private, Service, Products) that exhibit the commitment to all people living in the same world. In the awards ceremony held on November 8, 2023, 13 teams received the award and had their works displayed.

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The awards ceremony for Seoul Design Award 2023, an international design award honoring design projects that present creative and sustainable solutions to solve everyday issues, was held on October 25, 2023 at DDP Art Hall 1. Seoul Mayor Se-hoon Oh attended the ceremony to present the award in person and gave a congratulatory message to the winners.
The Grand Award went to a jar that makes drinking water in regions suffering from water shortage and Amphora that provides safe drinking water to the people of Tunisia using solar energy and moisture in the air.

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Seoul Design 2023, a festival of design where you can see the newest design trend in Seoul at a glance, was held at DDP for 10 days from October 24 through November 2.
The topic of this year’s festival, where one can meet the present and the future of K-design, was Valuable Life. Over 20 programs were arranged—such as exhibitions, conferences, markets, and sideline events—in collaboration with companies from Korea and abroad, designers, and SMEs by interpreting the role of design as we build a sustainable future from the ESG point of view.

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SDF selected 40 design assets of Seoul in 2022 with the aim of discovering outstanding design assets of Seoul and contributing to the efforts of the city to boost its urban competitiveness and create future values.
Designs were newly added to the list of Seoul's design assets after 10 years since 51 designs were chosen as Seoul design assets back in 2009. SDF published Seoul Design Assets Vol. 2, which captures the history, excellence, and differentiating points of 40 design assets selected in 2022. Seoul Design Assets Vol. 2 is a book that allows readers to grasp easily the value and history of designs divided into a total of 10 categories, including old palaces, architecture, villages, streets, cultural heritage, markets, transportation, visuals, performance, and information.

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DDP Autumn Festival 2023 was held alongside other programs like Seoul Light DDP Autumn and Midnight in Seoul between August 31 and September 30 with the name Design & Art.
Seoul Light DDP in particular began with the question “Can real nature that has existed since the beginning of time and technological nature created by people coexist?” through artworks like Miguel Chevalier’s Meta-Nature AI and Dan Acher x LG OLED’s Borealis at DDP.
We'd like to discover the “sense of coexistence” that allows humans and nature to interchange and coexist, instead of unilaterally controlling and dominating nature. Meet the new form of nature reinvented by lights (projections) that existed before anything else in the world materialized by science and technology, and experience not only a sense of coexistence but also biophilia.

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Seoul Light DDP, a massive media facade exhibition on a 222m area of the curved exterior of DDP, was named Winner of the Red Dot Design Award 2023 in the Brands & Communication Design competition. Seoul Light DDP is a colossal media art exhibition spanning 222m held at DDP.

DDP Spring Festival 2023: DDP Design Playground was held from May 4 through 7. In celebration of the 101st Children’s Day, SDF installed and operated a carousel usually found in large amusement parks in Oulim Square in DDP as a special event. This was not all—DDP held a variety of programs including an exhibition of K-characters in CookieRun and Bellygom that are enjoying worldwide popularity, outdoor movie screenings and concerts, food trucks, and experience programs such as paper plane flying event and children’s sharing market. What’s special about the event was that visitors were provided with a lot of benefits through Dongdaemun Super Pass, a joint promotional event between DDP and a neighboring commercial district in Dongdaemun.

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SDF unveiled interview videos with 37 designers titled Design Seoul Story: 100 Years of Design Through Interviews on the SDF website. The video archive was put together to keep a record of interview videos of designers who have led the transformation of people and the city with design and provide insights to future generations because there are few records on designers who have propelled the development of Korea and the city of Seoul.
The 37 designers who were interviewed are hidden pioneers in different areas of design such as the first person who taught design in Korea, a designer who designed electronics, and designers who are called Korea’s first generation of designers. They consist of 11 space and environment designers, 11 graphic designers, 11 industrial designers, two craft designers, one service designer, and one in design management.

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SDF showcased the DDP brand pavilion in Milan Design Week 2023.
The DDP brand pavilion was arranged with the concept SEOUL.IZE, which interpreted DDP leading Seoul as a city where people around the world would love to visit as well as the latest trends, with lively, energetic design.
A total of 13 products were featured in the pavilion, such as: Beyond ddp series by designer Jungki Sung, illustrating DDP’s history, value, and architectural materials used; Stack by designers Seulgi Kim and Jihye Yoo who were inspired by the stunning sculptural staircase at DDP; and DD.Pium, a plant pot shaped like DDP, by Young Joon Jung.
Inside the pavilion, videos of Seoul Light, one of the major public events at DDP, Lucid Dreams: 5 Colors_Jaesung Park, 2021, and Opposites United_Kia Design, 2022 were screened to let visitors experience the feelings from the time.

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SDF signed a business agreement with four institutions including the Korea Institute of Design Promotion, Korea Craft & Design Foundation, and Designhouse on April 10, 2023.
The agreement was concluded to plan and host the country’s marquee design events that lead the global design industry through collaboration with the government, local governments, and private sector for the globalization of K-design.

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SDF held Seoul Light DDP, a mega light show with the theme Going beyond infinity to build a cosmic life, in the winter of 2022 starting December 17, 2022 through January 1, 2023. Despite the record-breaking chill, over 500,000 people flocked to Seoul Light DDP both online and offline. The event was concluded successfully, posting a 97% citizen satisfaction rate.
Seoul Light DDP welcomed the new year with Countdown, a media art by Hello Man that conveyed the hope and excitement for the new year. Seoul Light, which adorned the night sky above DDP, was even featured in the Watch-Night Bell ringing event broadcast live from Gwanghwamun, Jonggak, and DDP, earning raves from citizens.

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SDF held the ESG management announcement ceremony on December 22, 2022, showing its commitment to ESG management by embracing environment-friendly practices, fulfilling its corporate social responsibility, and having business transparency.
Attended by SDF CEO Kyung-don Rhee and the management and employees of SDF, the ceremony aimed to demonstrate SDF’s willingness internally and externally to grow as an organization dedicated to design trusted by citizens and to adopt ESG management through responsible management and transparent governance (G) on environment (E) and society (S).

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As a prominent event from Seoul Beauty Month held across the city of Seoul around the same time, the 2022 DDP Autumn Festival consists of a variety of contents provided for free, with which visitors can enjoy high-quality culture and arts. Such contents include K-Culture Fashion Show and Seoul Light, programs catering to Millennials and Gen Z in their 20s and 30s interested in beauty and fashion, and others that let citizens have fun in downtown Seoul in autumn, a great season for outings.

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The Seoul Design 2022 is Korea’s representative MICE event held during Seoul’s major design events such as 'Seoul Design Week', festival of design for citizens, and 'DDP Design Fair' as the design business launching show.
Held all over Seoul with DDP at its center, the event was also expanded to the virtual world (Metaverse). It includes professionals in the design industry and other related fields, leading global design trends in name and reality.
The theme of the Seoul Design 2022, 'Beautiful Life', captured hope to encourage citizens to enjoy the restored daily life after the COVID-19 pandemic and to communicate design’s role and value of promising a better life and a sustainable future.
The Seoul Design 2022 introduced design corporations in Korea and abroad and design hotspots in Seoul leading global design trends, newly presented novel design products jointly developed by designers and small business operators, and operated various programs to offer new job opportunities to young designers.

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The new Design Magazine Library featuring global design trends opened in July 2022 on the third floor of the DDP Design Lab. The Design Magazine Library is a small library where visitors can view the design history in Korea and abroad as well as a highly compact database center through which visitors can experience the significant portion of daily life taken up by design and utilize the data. The library is stocked with 107 magazines published in Korea and abroad specializing in graphic design, industrial design, architecture and interior design, beauty and fashion, and lifestyle.

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As the first special exhibition by the Design Museum, 'Meta-Horizons: The Future Now is a collaborative exhibition' between the Seoul Design Foundation and Zaha Hadid Architects(ZHA). Under the theme 'Innovation, Imagination, Interaction' the exhibition showcased the outcome and procedure of design works achieved by the late world-renowned architect Zaha Hadid, who pursued futuristic design while traversing past and present, reality and imagination, and between multiple genres. Each of the three sections of the exhibition explored ZHA’s concerns like “How greater the opportunities we will be able to obtain if we can simultaneously work on the cyber world and reality” and “How greater the possibilities we will be able to obtain from the development of digital design tools.”

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The DDP Spring Festival themed 'DDP Design Playground' celebrated the 100th anniversary of Children’s Day in 2022. The festival was the first contact event in DDP two years after the Korean government lifted social distancing, with various programs entertaining children all over the DDP venue.
Main programs included movies and LP DJ gigs at the grass hill, DDP Design Market, and Experiential Classes for Children, including a concert with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra. Many places in DDP were transformed into playgrounds for children to see, play, and shop. Stand-out installations of giant teddy bear balloons by pop artist Im Ji-bin in particular served as popular photo spots. For safety concerns, reservations were mandatory.

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The Seoul Design Foundation invited heads of design groups to the 2022 Project Meeting. Rhee Kyung-don, president of the Seoul Design Foundation, gave a presentation on the four major projects to provide citizens with new design experiences combining digital technology and design and sought design content for the future of DDP with the help of leading design groups. The four major projects included turning designs into digital assets to build the 2022 digital design platform, holding the Seoul Design 2022 and the Global Design Awards, and opening the Design Magazine Library.

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The 'Human City Design Awards' which marked their third year, are an international design awards event to honor individuals or companies contributing to the development of sustainable cities with harmonious relations between people and society and people and the environment. The third annual contest expanded to all design fields, including product, visual designs, digital and multimedia, space and systems, experiences, services, and social designs, in addition to the existing urban, spatial, and environmental designs. Despite restricted circumstances due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the event garnered global attention and response, receiving 100 entries submitted by 22 countries.
※ In October 2022, the Human City Design Awards were renamed Seoul Design Awards to include more design fields.

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The 'Seoul Light' festival is where festival goers can enjoy watching media façade works projected on the DDP building’s exterior walls. First introduced at the end of December 2019, the annual 'Seoul Light' event attracted more than 1 million visitors; thus becoming the city’s representative landmark in the DDP area.
The theme of the third festival in 2022 was “Beautiful Life,” featuring the main media façade titled <Lucid Dream - Five Colors> by media artist and Seoul National University professor Park Je-seong. Through the fantastic virtual world created with media art, the event delivered the message of hope in times of uncertainty to Seoul and global citizens weary from the pandemic—that the harmony of man and technology can help citizens move forward.

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Seoul Design Week is a representative design festival in Seoul that presents a Seoul-style lifestyle, and has been held offline at DDP since 2014.
The 2021 Seoul Design Week, which marks its eighth anniversary, was held as a three-day seminar by implementing DDP on the representative metaverse platform 'Gathertown' on the stage of the 3D virtual space 'Metaverse,' which broke the boundary between virtual and reality.
Under the theme of 'Design Reboot', it was filled with expert speakers such as design, branding, and virtual reality, reaffirming the identity of design in the ever-changing environment, society, and culture, and seeking the direction of Seoul Design Week in the future.

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The DDP Design Fair is a business launching show specializing in new design products and services created through collaborations between small manufacturing firms and designers.
The 2021 DDP Design Fair, themed 'Create Happiness by Making Wonderful Life Beautiful,' was held on-offline simultaneously, suggesting how design trends improve daily life during hard times. The offline exhibition displayed new products, with the online version compiling a database to promote the virtuous cycle of the ecosystem of the design industry.
The fair proposed evolved lifestyles of one-person households, daily life with pets, and home offices through 106 new products and services developed based on five-month-long collaborations between small design firms and designers.

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The DDP Spring Festival opened in 2021 to celebrate Children’s Day under the theme 'Kids’ World in May in DDP.'
The festival offered special 'design' programs to introduce culture, architecture, and design customized for young children to experience design in DDP indoors and outdoors, such as live gigs presented by the recreational vehicle with a built-in stage, Architectural Tour for Children’s Day in DDP, Designers’ Workshops, and Family Programs.

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The videoconference studio 'Seoul-On' opened on the second floor of the DDP Design Lab. Equipped with Korea’s largest media studio space measuring 35 meters, the studio comes with LED display panels, high-definition video equipment, sound and lighting systems fit for a news studio, and live broadcast facility allowing real-time media transmission. The space is suitable for hosting various on- and offline as well as hybrid events, including various contactless events, international seminars, talk shows, meetings, forums, lectures, and more. The videoconference studio seats 80, whereas the videoconference meeting room seats 20.

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The theme of the 2021 'Seoul Light' was 'Seoul Haemong II'. Seoul Haemong means 'Seoul’s Dream Interpretation', which conveyed the 'light of hope' to Seoul citizens weary from the prolonged pandemic.
The media artwork expressed the image of the spring season the sentiment people feel from nature, like beautiful blossoms and birth of new life on the exterior surface of DDP to give hope to citizens.

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The Human City Design Awards are an international awards event seeking to honor outstanding design projects offering the future direction of urban design through sustainable design works to make citizens’ everyday life happy.
Marking its second year in 2020, the recognition succeeded in differentiating itself from many other design awards; thus securing its global status. Despite the tough year due to COVID-19 that struck the entire world, 99 projects from 31 countries entered the Human City Design Awards, representing about 32 percent increase in the number of entries compared to 2019.
The Grand Prize of the second Human City Design Awards went to the project "Countless Cities" from Italy. The project recreated abandoned, decrepit houses on the island of Sicily into spaces for contemporary art exhibitions and community activities. The design and art regeneration project activated the city once buried in oblivion into a major tourist attraction visited by 100,000 spectators.

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The 2020 Seoul Design Week is a global design festival that proposes lifestyles fit for Seoul. Due to the social distancing policy at the time, the event was held online under the theme 'Design for New Normal.'
At the online international forum broadcast live on YouTube in particular, design professionals in Korea and abroad shared their thoughts through fine examples of designs and design solutions responding to COVID-19.

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Registered as a Type 1 Public Museum on February 17, 2020, the DDP Design Museum was born as Korea’s one and only public design museum. To celebrate the feat, the DDP Design Museum opened its first exhibition online <Symbols of Happiness> featuring the museum’s private collection.
The exhibition aimed to discover the value of the newly reinterpreted design of five lost activities in view of daily life prior to the COVID-19 pandemic as it grafted 3D technology to overcome the limits of contactless life. The so-called <symbols of happiness> were presented in terms of five activities—'listening to music', 'watching TV', 'cleaning the house', 'doing the laundry', and 'storing food'— in addition to designs, advertisements, and texts related to these activities. Reflecting the 'island' symbolizing the five activities, the website allows viewers to discover the meaning of design in everyday life. The online exhibition lasted for one year, from December 2020 to December 23, 2021.

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In 2020, the Seoul City Government and the Seoul Design Foundation announced their support for firms and individuals with creative design ideas but suffering from hardships due to COVID-19 with cash awards totaling 2 billion won through a contest. Starting May 2020, the city government and the Seoul Design Foundation held three meetings attended by design associations representatives and professionals who listened to opinions in various design fields and provided support measures.
The contest theme was 'Designed for a Better Life for Citizens in the Era of COVID-19 and New Normal'. Some excellent ideas, selected through discussions, were supported in their execution and/or implemented to create products related to the Seoul Design Foundation projects in 2021.

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As a collaborative project between small manufacturers and designers, the DDP Design Fair functions as a platform where small firms’ 'know-how of product development' and designers’ 'ideas' meet. From product launches of various products in the fields of furniture, lighting, and daily living, small-scale manufacturers secured paths to produce and promote products while designers established business methods and networks. In 2020, the Design Fair matched online design businesses throughout the year starting November 20.

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As a global festival of light, Seoul Light marked its second anniversary in October 2020 under the theme 'Design, Life, and Hope after COVID-19'. In time for the contactless era after the pandemic, the festival presented a new world of media façades in DDP online. By adding online services, the existing offline event featuring media façade videos was uploaded to DDP’s social media network. The festival, which lasted until year-end, was directed by Turkish media artist Refik Anadol who collaborated with the Seoul Design Foundation.

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Specializing in career incubation services for young design professionals, the Seoul Design Incubating Center opened in July 2020. Located in front of Hongik University Station in Mapo district, the Seoul Design Incubating Center seeks to create jobs and establish an active start-up environment for competent next-generation designers as part of the city’s policy to support creative career incubation.
Interested applicants can receive support for all stages of design-related businesses, from developing ideas and business models to producing prototypes and products to distribution and sales. The center provides job seekers with the finest mentoring services courtesy of top professionals in the fields of design, law, and media, with the opening of businesses, exchange of ideas, and training held in one place.
The 2,987.32㎡ Seoul Design Incubating Center occupies three floors from the third to the fifth floor, housing a conference room and a 'training and support hall'(located on the third floor) to fortify the competence required in opening a business and a space reserved for tenant companies (on the fourth floor) such as meeting rooms and a photo studio equipped with a makeup room, in addition to the 'membership lounge' (on the fifth floor) including shared lounge, work stations, and design gallery where members can meet, mingle, and exchange information.

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<Women in Design> is an online exhibition to celebrate the grand opening of the DDP Design Museum. In keeping with the subtitle 'For Better Daily Life,' the exhibition examined the impact of design on women’s life and daily life inspired by thoughts expressed by more than 70 female designers in Korea and abroad. Actively utilizing online space, the event presented everyday items and meaningful design content easily identified by citizens, including how design changed women’s life.

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The DDP Design Museum was registered as a Type 1 Public Museum "No. 2020-01 by Seoul Metropolitan Government" in February 2020, heralding a new beginning as Korea’s one and only public design museum. As a public design museum representing South Korea, the Design Museum inside DDP is expected to present high-standard design exhibitions befitting the new era of design museums.

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'Seoul Light' is a media façade festival where various media contents are projected onto the curved exterior surface of the 220-meter DDP building.
The theme of the inaugural event in 2019 was 'Seoul Haemong' which offered a special experience for viewers to travel through the "space of memories' through the three chapters—the past, present, and future—of Seoul and DDP. To implement this concept, artistic director Min Se-hee and media artist Refik Anadol presented visual works that interpreted dreams using AI by collecting data from DDP’s past, present, and future. The festival attracted over 1 million spectators, becoming the new attraction in the DDP area and the city’s representative winter festival.
The Seoul Light event included a light show as well as Seoul Light Market, cultural performances, and Seoul Light Forum and Workshop, among many cultural events.

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As a design product launching show presented by small firm manufacturers and designers
the 「DDP Design Fair」 was planned to activate the urban manufacturing industry and generate jobs in the design industry. The fair supported collaborative product development by connecting small manufacturing firms and designers.
The 2019 DDP Design Fair was held from December 4 to 8 at DDP Art Hall 2 and International Seminar Hall. Divided into three sections, the event proposed design trends and lifestyles under the following themes 'The Story of Small Firms and Designers Collaborations', 'The Story of Design by Young Designers Proposed to Small Firms', and 'Now! The Story of Design Trends'.

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The Human City Design Awards ceremony honors urban design projects (individual designers or groups) whose creative designs resolve complex problems of the urban environment and propose a new vision to contribute to the harmony and sustainable relationships between people, society, environment, and nature.
The inaugural awards event in 2019 selected 12 candidates from 75 projects submitted from 25 countries in pursuit of the public value of design. Various themes of the 12 projects were noteworthy as they included Space Expansion, Nature-Friendliness, Shared Space, Collaborative Design, Tools Utilizing Natural Flow, Low-cost Housing, Shared Town Center, Collaborative Housing, and Participatory Festival. The Grand Prize went to the South African project 'The Learning and Innovation Precinct in Dunoon', which resolved urban problems through sports facilities and library designs.

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The 2019 Seoul Design Week themed 'Design Yourself' was held for seven days from September 20 to 26 in DDP. The event included the main programs such as the 1st Human City Design Awards Ceremony, 2nd Human City Design Conference, and Human City Design Exhibition as well as various collaborative programs. 'Seeking improved life through design', the design week provided participants with a venue for communication between designers and citizens, corporations and institutions, and schools and local societies and included collaborative exhibitions presented by designers and corporations, special interior design exhibitions, and design product promotions offering design solutions for life in Seoul, forums and designers’ presentations on design trends, and job fair for university students majoring in design. As a global design festival representing Seoul, Seoul Design Week proposes discourses on new designs, and it is being developed as a sustainable platform to nurture the Seoul design industry.

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The DDP(Dongdaemun Design Plaza), celebrated the fifth anniversary of its grand opening in 2019. DDP has become one of the world’s most beloved design hubs in the world, making it a famous landmark beyond the Dongdaemun area in South Korea. As a comprehensive content platform that showcased the Kansong art collection, global brands, and young designers, DDP has held 182 exhibitions and 457 events attended by 42 million spectators as of March 2019. DDP was the last posthumous project by the late architect Zaha Hadid. The special event to celebrate DDP's fifth birthday offered various participatory programs to citizens.

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Seoul Design Cloud is a design festival encompassing Seoul Design Week, Seoul Fashion Week, and Seoul Upcycling Week. Celebrating the fourth anniversary of the DDP opening, the event served as a place for citizens’ participation and communication under the theme 'Sharing Design'. The Seoul Design Cloud event was held for ten days, packed with programs like conferences, exhibitions, markets, events, and contests.
Seoul Design Cloud introduced design projects hosted by the Seoul Design Foundation in keeping with the direction of design policies of the Seoul city government, which is seeking to realize a classy, humane city utilizing universal and convenient design for all people. The event is also a venue for sharing designs among citizens and private and public sectors in Korea and abroad and communicating to support job opportunities for young people and small design firms and activate the Dongdaemun business zone.

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DDP’s main design playground for children was remodeled and reopened on September 27, 2017. The newly opened playground 'Dikidiki' was designed to nurture design sensibilities, imagination, and creativity for children when they play and have fun there. Veering away from existing playground frames, Dikidiki is a new-concept playground combining play, design, and education for children.

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The 2017 Seoul Design Week simultaneously opened all over Seoul with DDP at its center, from September 21 to 27, under the theme 'Designs in Relationship'. As a venue for "seeking a better life through design", the event is a design festival representing Seoul where designers and citizens, corporations and institutions, and schools and local societies communicated and established consensus. Marking its fourth anniversary in 2017, Seoul Design Week attracted some 25,000 participants through the cooperation between more than 500 public and private sectors in Korea and abroad, becoming a major design event meeting global standards.

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As Korea’s largest organization promoting the (upcycling) culture, 'Seoul Upcycling Plaza' opened on September 5, 2017.
For the project, the Korean word 'Saehwalyong' was newly adopted from the English word upcycling, which refers to activities of creating new use or design out of discarded objects or material in such a way that the outcome has higher quality or value than the original. Seoul Upcycling Plaza in Yongdap-dong, Seongdong-gu was founded to deliver various cultural programs, such as training classes, exhibitions, and events, for citizens to experience the concept of upcycling while increasing and disseminating the importance and awareness of upcycling.

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The first 「Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism」 a global festival of academic seminars and exhibitions for 'urban architecture,' was held in several locations in Seoul, including DDP and Donuimun Museum Village, from September 2 to November 5, 2017. Themed 'Imminent Commons,' the 2017 Seoul Biennale aimed at seeking the future of urban civilization in the shared city. As the event suggested, the theory of 'shared cities consisted' of four shared resources air, water, fire, and land and four methods of sharing: perceiving, connecting, moving, and making and reusing. The event also explored the paradigm of new urban architecture based on the Ten Commons. As co-directors, Professor Hyungmin Pai (from Korea) and Alejandro Zaera Polo (from Spain) were in charge of planning the biennale and detailed program operations and building networks in Korea and abroad.

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'The 2016 Seoul Design Week', the city’s largest global design festival participated in by citizens, was held all over the city of Seoul with DDP at its core from September 22 to October 2. The theme of the 2016 Seoul Design Week was 'Smart City, Smart Design, Smart Life,' which narrated the story of Smart City Seoul in pursuit of Smart Life via Smart Design. The event served as a place for participants to seek the roles and responsibilities of design in these fast-changing times. In addition to the main exhibition '2016 theme exhibition Smart Design Smart Life', the design week included various exhibitions, markets, conferences, and events.

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The slogan of the 2015 Seoul Design Week a design festival for all design lovers was 'Seoul’s Design Wizard'. Suggesting invisible designs, the slogan sought to share the value of ubiquitous and happy design that made citizens’ lives more convenient and comfortable.
Main programs included newly formatted programs such as Design Mate and Designers’ Party, Seoul Craft Exposition, Universal Design Exposition, Seminar, and Milan Design Film Festival, in addition to more evolved programs highlighting design such as Seoul Design Tour, Seoul Design Forum, Seoul Design Market, Seoul Design Festival, and KCC C.M.F. Trend Seminar.

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A super-large-scale exhibition by world-renowned designer Alessandro Mendini opened at the DDP Design Exhibition Hall in October 2015 under the auspices of the Seoul Design Foundation and Italian Cultural Center in Seoul. The solo exhibition bearing his name was the first of its kind in Korea and East Asia, displaying all of his works more than 600 pieces from past to present in the spacious design hall measuring a total of 1,300 square meters.

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The first Seoul Design Week was held in several locations in Seoul, including DDP and COEX, for five days. Main programs included the 'Seoul Design Spot Tour' through which citizens could travel along design attractions in Seoul, '2014 Seoul Design Festival' specializing in Korea’s representative designs, '2014 Herald Design Forum' where world-renowned design professionals shared their philosophies and ideas, 'Design Market' introducing and selling daily design products and wellbeing foods, and 'Design Talk' where design professionals shared discourses on designs inspired by Seoul.
The Seoul Design Foundation aimed to make the event a festival for Seoul citizens and tourists alike to share and experience various design contents inspired by Seoul through various categories like architecture, design, major attractions, and exhibitions and continuously and mutually develop the event as a major design festival through which the foundation collaborated with private design events.

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「The 2015 S/S Seoul Fashion Week」 Asia’s largest fashion festival, was held in DDP for six days from October 17 to 22, 2014. Celebrating its 14th anniversary, the Seoul Fashion Week disseminated the rising status of Seoul as a global fashion capital with the purpose of globalizing the Korean fashion industry by fortifying buyers’ consultation that can help Korean fashion designers export products abroad.
Hosted by the Seoul City Government and supervised by the Seoul Design Foundation and the Council of Fashion Designers of Korea, the 2015 S/S Seoul Fashion Week presented 55 Seoul Collections, 25 Generation Next shows, and 5 presentations, for a total of 85 fashion shows.

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The DDP(Dongdaemun Design Plaza) the origin of design and creative industries, had its grand opening on March 21, 2014.
DDP is a venue for introducing global design trends and innovative cases and enabling citizens and tourists to meet the past, present, and future of Seoul, South Korea. DDP considers 'Design with People' as the best value in pursuing new ideas, diverse talents, and better life.
As a platform of symbiosis and dissemination of design culture in the Dongdaemun area, DDP had 'Metonymic Landscape' as its architectural concept proposed by the late Zaha Hadid, capturing the new landscape of Dongdaemun enhanced with the value of and vision toward a new future based on the historical, cultural, social, and economic frameworks of the Dongdaemun area.

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The newly constructed landmark of Seoul seeks to secure its position as the Mecca of global fashion and design industries. The construction of Dongdaemun Design Plaza(DDP), was started on April 28, 2009 and completed in November 2013. DDP was designed by the late Iraq-born British architect Zaha Hadid, who won the international invitational design contest in August 2007. DDP is the world's largest three-dimensional free-form building with nonlinear curved lines making up the interior and exterior of the building.

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The Seoul City Government established a comprehensive master plan in 2009 to support the industrial design led by small and medium firms and opened the 'Seoul Design Support Center' in Dongdaemun on September 6 after more than a year of remodeling.
Fully supporting design-related management for small and medium firms in Seoul, the 'Seoul Design Support Center' is housed in a nine-story building where the headquarters of the Seoul Design Foundation moved so that the center can play a pivotal role in establishing networks between design groups and institutions and promote exchanges and cooperation.

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The Seoul Design Fair 2010 was held in four major design clusters, including Jamsil Sports Complex, from September 17 to October 7. The name 「Seoul Design Olympics」 which started in 2008, was changed to 「Seoul Design Fair 2010」 in 2010 as a newly born design festival for global citizens to participate in exhibitions, conferences, contests, and events.
The theme of the 'Seoul Design Fair 2010' was 'Design for All', through which participants could feel the value of design from materials used in everyday life and share their benefit with all. The design contest was participated in by designers from more than 100 countries, including noted design masters and scholars and students of prestigious academic institutions; thus making it a prestigious international event in name and reality.

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Dongdaemun History & Culture Park Opening on October 27 The Seoul City Government hosted the opening ceremony at 2 p.m. on October 27, 2009 to celebrate the completion of the 19,597㎡Dongdaemun History & Culture Park, which was open to Seoul citizens, in the park area along the Seoul fortress. The opening ceremony was for the opening of Dongdaemun History & Culture Park, Dongdaemun History Museum inside the Park, Seoul Museum of History, Dongdaemun Stadium Memorial Museum, and Design Gallery. A special exhibition was also held to celebrate the opening of the Event Hall.

The Dongdaemun Design Plaza&Park(DDP), opened the DDP Promotion Hall in April 2009 on the DDP construction site as part of the groundbreaking ceremony. The Promotion Hall displayed information, construction background and procedures of DDP, Design Seoul streets, Namsan Renaissance, Design Seoul, WDC, Regeneration of the City Center, and more. The DDP Promotion Hall was operated until November 6, 2012 following the construction of DDP.