DESIGN IN SEOUL 서울의 디자인 SUMMER 2026
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Art and design in Seoul is simultaneously hyper contemporary and deeply historical. You can move from a digitally saturated commercial street to a centuries-old temple within minutes. This contrast shapes the visual language of the city in its architecture, typography, signage, materials, and everyday interactions.
What can we learn about a city by paying close attention to how it looks, functions, and communicates?
In this program, Seoul becomes our classroom. We will be living in the city for one month, engaging with it daily through observation, movement, and design work.
While there are scheduled activities, site visits, and structured studio time, students are also expected to pursue their own interests, follow curiosities, and share discoveries with one another. The experience is both individual and collective.
Students will explore the city through observation, documentation, and design translation. Through walking, collecting, photographing, drawing, and writing, we will examine how visual culture operates in public space.
Students will translate these observations into design outcomes. Found details, systems, and patterns will be reinterpreted into visual forms, structures, and ideas.
Throughout the program, students will participate in workshops, studio visits, and museum visits. Workshops and studio visits will include direct engagement with Korean designers and, in some cases, Korean university design students, offering insight into how design is practiced, discussed, and understood within Korean contexts.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
- Exhibit knowledge of the histories, traditions, and visual culture of Seoul
- Demonstrate understanding and application of design and cultural vocabulary
- Use observation and documentation such as photography, drawing, and writing as design research methods
- Translate collected material into visual design outcomes
- Critically compare and reflect on cultural perspectives through direct experience
- Develop technical and conceptual design skills
- Engage respectfully and thoughtfully as a student in another cultural context