SEOUL DESIGN AWARD

 

 

 

□ Marking its third anniversary, the Human City Design Award, an international awards program which selects design projects that benefit people, society and environment, hosted an online award ceremony on 21st March at the DDP and selected House of Dreams for its Grand Prize winner.

 

□ House of Dreams is village community space built at an abandoned cave in Dengfeng (Zhoushan), Henan, China with wastes in the surrounding area designed by Insitu Project. The title of this project, House of Dreams, symbolizes the collective memory of the old people who grew up in the cave. The space has guest rooms, amenity facility, shared kitchen, dining room and exhibition space. It is noticeable that individual residents from over 100 villages expressed their stories to the surface of the structure by participating in waste collection and construction. A villager who participated in this project said, “through this project, we were able to take pride in our community and deeply understand ways to reuse wastes.” Insitu Project that led this project is a design group working through the collaboration of various disciplines of design. It played a role in re-energizing a community and improving resiliency through space design and participation of the local community.

○ Charles Landry, the head of the jury of the Human City Design Award and a world’s renowned expert in creative city, commented, “this is a thoughtful project through which residents can learn new skills.” Judge Rachel Troye highly praised the project, saying “it created and developed a model by allowing participation of under-skilled local residents based on true cooperation and community. Its result was also aesthetically excellent.”

 

 

□ This year, the award added Safety & Security Award and Citizens’ Award to identify designs that clearly benefited the lives of citizens at this point. Goyohan Taxi by CO:ACTUS and SK TELECOM and OOZOORO 1216 by EUS+Architects were selected for the winners of Safety & Security Award and Citizens’ Award, respectively.

○ The winner of Safe & Security Award, Goyohan Taxi, is a service design project that applies mobile technology to facilitate smooth communication between passengers and taxi drivers with hearing impairment and ensure safe driving. This project was designed from the perspective of universal design to avoid any inconvenience for passengers while focusing on convenience and information accessability of people with disabilities. It is assessed as an exemplary case that showcases ways that people with disabilities can enjoy ordinary life using IT, display system and applications.

 

 

○ OOZOORO 1216 of Korea, the winner for Citizens’ Award, is a space design project implemented on the third floor of Jeonju Municipal Library that allowed so-called the “tween” generation aged from 12 to 16 who will actually use the place to participate in the design process with experts through a design workshop. Inspired by Jeonju Fortress, the design connected different spaces with a corridor. The space is special because it makes users to think creatively and communicate about future cities while exploring different sections of the space. One citizen who participated in the screening process said, “the space is creative and innovative in that adolescents who will use the space engaged in the design process to create this place only for them.”

 

 

□ Along with the winners for Grand Prize and Special Awards, all other projects selected for the winners also inspire cities around the world and demonstrate the role of good design.

○ Accessible Beaches by No Barrier in Turkey assists the elderly and people with disabilities on wheelchairs to enjoy beach more easily. It is a project designing all facilities, including decks, changing rooms, and shower rooms, barrier-free, so that people can go in the beach on their wheelchairs.

○ Gardens in the Air – Neighbourhood Lights by Nomad Garden S. L. is a project conducted in Sevilla, Spain which is very hot and dry city with 82.6% of air conditioner penetration rate. This garden was created using about two liters of water generated every operating hour from an air conditioner.

○ Trash Busters by the team Trash Busters of Korea designed a circular system by lending reusable tableware to festivals, events, and theaters that use lots of disposable products, collecting them later, cleansing them, and lending them again.

 

□ The award ceremony was held online this year due to COVID-19. With presence of many designers and citizens from around the world, this event was live-streamed on YouTube on 21st March.

○ In the third Human City Design Award, 100 designs were submitted from 22 countries during the application period from 29th July 2021 to 31st October 2021. After three rounds of screening by experts, ten winner teams for Honorable Mention Prize (Excellence Prize) were selected from Mexico, Brazil, Spain, Japan, China, Turkey, France and Korea. Out of ten winners for Honorable Mention Prize, one team with the greatest excellency received the Grand Prize. Also, through citizen vote, the winner for Citizens’ Award was selected out of the ten Honorable Mention Prize winners. This created an opportunity for citizens to participate in the process that design exerts good influence.

○ The winner projects were selected based on the following judging criteria: 1) problem solving for urban life, 2) global value expansion, and 3) providing vision for the future. The award granted 50 million KRW of prize money and trophy to the winner of the Grand Prize and 5 million KRW of prize money and plaque to the winners of the Honorable Mention Prize (Excellence Prize) and Special Prizes (Citizens’ Award and Safety & Security Award), respectively.

 

□ The judges and members of the steering committee of the Human City Design Award attended at the award ceremony to share the ground for their selection and celebrate the winners. The winner of the Grand Prize (House of Dreams), the winner of the Safety & Security Award (Goyohan Taxi), the winner of the Citizens’ Award (OOZOORO 1216), as well as the other winners of the Honorable Mention Prize participated in the online award ceremony and made their acceptance speech.

 

□ The ten designs of the winners of the Grand Prize and special prizes, and the design of the Safety & Security Award will be on exhibition for free by 29th April 2022 (Friday) at D-Forest, 1st floor, Design Lab of the Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP).

 

□ Lee Kyung-Don, CEO of the Seoul Design Foundation, said, “after last year, this year while preparing for the fourth Human City Design Award, we are receiving lots of excellent projects from around the world.” He added, “in the future, the design award hosted by the Seoul Design Foundation will identify, award and encourage designers who designed creative solutions, while putting heads together with citizens to allow people to lead better life at the center of this changing world.”

 

□ The Human City Design Award sponsored by Seoul Metropolitan Government, and hosted and organized by the Seoul Design Foundation was hosted for the first time in 2019, advocating the expansion of design value and good influence of design. In the previous awards, Dunoon Learning and Innovation Project (2019) that created library and educational institute for children in a poor village using space design in Dunoon, Cape Town, South Africa; and Countless Cities (2020) that transformed old and abandoned houses in a village of Sicily into a new art space with design were respectively selected for the winners of the Grand Prize. As these attracted attention from the designers around the world, the Human City Design Award is becoming a global design award for public good.