Seoul Design Foundation

As a Seoul Metropolitan Government affiliated instruction, Seoul Design Foundation seeks to improve the quality of citizen’s lives and enhance the competitiveness of the design of Seoul by conducting various projects aimed at disseminating design culture and promoting the design industry.

Seoul Design Foundation pursues the vision of people – centric design, citizen satisfactory design, and design seeking to add class and charm to Seoul. It develops projects under three main strategic directions strengthening the capacity for service design, cultivation of the creative design industry and revitalization of the local economy.

Strengthening the Capacity for Service Design
The foundation conducts research on service design aimed at addressing social problems. It operates Seoul Design Research Centre and carries out research tasks such as safe environment design strategies and public welfare improvement plans to follow Seoul city’s mid and long-term design policies and to improve the quality of citizen’s lives.

It conducts researches on low-platform bus interior design, sub-way station information system and operates TBS Design Research Centre to present a long-term vision of the design policy on Seoul’s public transportation system and integrated design guidelines for the environment friendly public transportation system of Seoul.

Cultivation of the Creative Design Industry
Seoul Design Foundation lays the foundation for global fashion business. It holds Seoul Fashion Week to develop domestic brands into global fashion brands and helps small – sized brands make forays into the world market. It operates Seoul Fashion Creative Studio to provide support for young designers and the establishment of integrated Dongdaemun brand.

The foundation holds Seoul Modelist Contest and Operates Fashion Support Centre to help small fashion sewing business upgrade its competitiveness.

For promoting the sales of design products, the foundation participates in exhibitions and expos held both in and out of the country, holding open competition for souvenirs symbolizing Seoul, and managing art shops and design tag malls to help well-performing designers and business find on/off-line promotion channels and markets.

Revitalization of the Local Economy
The foundation holds special exhibitions to share creative design culture with Seoul citizen’s and operates creative platform to encourage the public’s participation to broaden creative resources, develops education programs for hand-on experience using history, culture and design resources of DDP.

It organizes programs and events designed to revitalize business in Dongdaemun area and invites developing creative contents suitable to DDP, invigorating creative business in DDP by offering rental spaces for various launching shows, exhibitions, conferences etc.