Archinect - News

Thomas Heatherwick to direct 2025 Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism

2024-06-03T19:10:00-04:00

South Korea's Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism just announced that Thomas Heatherwick will be the General Director of its fifth iteration next year.

Billed as Asia's biggest architecture biennial, the 2025 program seeks to explore "how to make buildings and cities radically more joyful and engaging," a mantra Heatherwick has been championing with his Humanise campaign.

"We are honored and thrilled by this appointment to curate our first Biennale," Heatherwick responded. "There are over 300 biennales taking place around the world today. But the original ambition to use them as vehicles for debate and engagement with the public, too easily gets lost in professional echo-chambers, which most ordinary people don’t engage with."

"We plan to turn the concept of a biennale inside out and create a big, full-throttle conversation with Seoulites. We want to get to the heart of what matter...

RIOS unveils 100-year 'Hyper-Abundant City' concept at Seoul Biennale

2023-09-14T14:44:00-04:00

RIOS has released details of a new 100-year master plan included as part of its participation in the 4th Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism (SBAU), which takes place through the end of October in the South Korean capital.

The firm's concept for the 'Hyper-Abundant City' significantly alters the upscale Apgujeong district by incorporating the urban fabric of the adjacent Gangnam neighborhood while extending an existing connection to the Han River. Ecological plots revealing vertical villages that are inspired by Hanok architectural traditions are protected by shoreline islands which the architects say aid in managing stormwater runoffs and flood mitigation. Finally, the plots are connected to each other through an interlinking series of open spaces that permeate the site.

Rendering by Aesthetica Studio, image courtesy of RIOS

The river’s natural systems are relieved by the careful selection and placement of access points which minimize human activity while allowing land to...

Dominique Perrault on the role architects have in post-pandemic society

2021-11-09T11:48:00-05:00

In my opinion, many people consider architects less important today, while they demand engineers, landscape experts and environmentalists. It seems they no longer expect a comprehensive perspective and sensibility from architects. Architects should become advocates for architecture and fight for their role.

With the completion of the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2021, Perrault will now pivot his focus to the 2024 Olympic Village plan that will help revitalize Saint-Denis, long-held to be one of the most neglected communes in the French capital region.

This year’s program focused on building resilience in cities as the specter of Covid loomed over the Biennale, causing disruptions in its traditional slate of in-person events. Perrault is currently finalizing plans for a new transit center in Seoul’s Gangnam district that will be completed in 2023.

Previously on Archinect: 2021 Seoul Biennale to open with online event on September 16th

“Going through the pandemic, it seems the proximity and heterogeneity of spaces have become important,” he said. “In order to keep up with the changing demand, new types of investment and a variety of projects are called for.”

Dominique Perrault will direct 2021 Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism

2019-11-16T09:00:00-05:00

French architect Dominique Perrault has been selected to curate the 2021 run of the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism.

Perrault, founder of Dominique Perrault Architecture, succeeds architect Lim Jaeyong and urban planner Francisco Sanin, the curators of the 2019 edition of the biennale. Accord to a press release announcing Perrault's selection, the forthcoming biennale will "explore themes and research that will enrich professional practice and the vision on the city today and tomorrow."

The 3rd Seoul Biennae of Architecture and Urbanism is due to take place between September and November of 2021. The 2017 edition of the event was themed under the title of "Imminent commons," while the 2019 exhibition focused on the theme of "Collective city."

Perrault is perhaps best known for as the architect of the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris.

Seoul's first architecture biennale: "A kind of experimental laboratory of urban governance"

2017-11-02T13:52:00-04:00

From Zaha Hadid’s bulbous plaza to a ‘library’ of flora planted across a skygarden, the South Korean capital is using its architecture festival to look to the future – and atone for the costly sins of the past

The Guardian architecture critic Oliver Wainwright is in South Korea's capital reporting from the inaugural Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism. "There are over 200 biennales already, so we had to do something different," he quotes the event's curator Hyungmin Pai. "We see it as a kind of experimental laboratory of urban governance, not just for Seoul, but for cities around the world."