(Pier Paolo - Torino, Italia) The recent appointment of Seoul as World Design Capital in 2010 could be interpreted in two different ways at least. From one hand we could read the attempt to free South Korea from the stereotyped image of the ICT Nation above all. On the other hand we could consider the effort to include a lot of design Korean actions under the same umbrella named Design. In short, the attempt to boost quality and exports of Korean car district well represented by companies such as Hyundai, Kia or Daewoo, considered worldwide as the second regional business segment after IT (with two Korean pillars: Samsung and LG). And giving authoritativeness to international events such as Design Korea, founded in 2003 and now arrived at the third appointment. This event (International conference, exhibition and so on) very attractive for the international design community, has the cultural objective to put together ideas, design policies, associations, institutions, designers, critics and students. And they do it very well under the coordination of KIDP (Korean Institute of Design Promotion), the real motor of all these events.
Therefore the mayor of Seoul, Oh Se-Hoon, last October (when the city was named World Design Capital 2010) mentioned the so call “miracle on the Han river”. This is the period between Sixties and Seventies in which there was an extraordinary and rapid economic and industrial growth in Seoul, the city in which the river Han flows. So Seoul triumphed over cities such as Dubai, Singapore and Toronto and it is really worthy of this appointment beacuse of all the efforts to support a real international culture of industrial design at different levels. The Korean city and its area (which has about 20 million of inhabitants) will be for one year backstage and background of the design events. However my feeling is that Seoul is already an ICT and design international capital.
It seems that WDC nomination is going to move rapidly from cities that consider design as an instrument for transformation and social-economic change (this condition seemed to be really important at the beginning of the award WDC), to capitals already known as design or ICT cities.
In short, from an award to virtuous cities with their processes of transformations to an award to industrial districts and companies. Of course this nomination is a positive message for European cities such as Barcelona, London, Milan, they will have more chances to get this award. What about other fizzy and interesting cities such as Valencia or Gwangju?
(picture by Sergio Corsaro)