Seoul has always been a city of contrasts—a historic capital shaped by its deep traditions, yet constantly reinventing itself as a cultural and technological hub. With the unveiling of Future City Seoul at Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP), this duality is given fresh expression. Organised by the Seoul Design Foundation under the leadership of CEO Cha Gang-heui, the exhibition, on view from November 29, 2024 - April 06, 2025, transforms the Design Lab on the third floor of the DDP into a speculative universe of art and ideas. The initiative envisions cities as dynamic, living canvases shaped by their inhabitants, inviting audiences to co-create a more sustainable and human-centred future. While AI is central to the featured works, it is not seen as a replacement for humanity but as a tool to reveal hidden ecological, social and cultural patterns. By exploring AI’s imperfections as human-like qualities and decoding emotions in social networking service data or ecological systems, the exhibition offers fresh perspectives on urban design and our collective future.

At the heart of the exhibition is Miguel Chevalier’s Meta Cities AI Seoul 2024, a mesmerising AI-driven installation that renders Seoul as a living, breathing organism. Chevalier’s work examines the city’s rapid growth and global interconnectedness using AI technology. The piece translates urban and natural rhythms into evolving visuals that depict Seoul’s transformation. Known for his focus on nature’s patterns, Chevalier incorporates ecological aesthetics with the city grids. The inclusion of Hangul characters adds a cultural specificity to the work, producing a detailed, data-driven portrayal of Seoul as a living, breathing metropolis constantly in motion.

This thematic exploration continues in Je Baak’s Lucid Dream – Five Colors (2021), a projected work that delves into the psychological landscapes of urban existence. Baak fragments the city into dreamlike sequences, merging the digital world of the metaverse with the flowing curves of DDP. The work uses an AI algorithm to bring Baak’s poetry to life—hopeful verses that describe a peaceful future, like bedtime stories for a child. The AI’s imperfect process of turning poetic language into visuals creates a series of broken, fragmented images. These images are projected as animations, where joy intertwines with uncertainty, transforming Seoul into a surreal and dreamlike landscape. Familiar elements of the city are reshaped, inviting viewers to reflect on the delicate connections and aspirations that define urban life today.

Lee Jaehyung’s Face of City (2020) takes a different approach, translating Seoul’s collective emotions into a living, digital portrait. Using social media data, Lee creates a digital portrait of Seoul that captures its mood as it fluctuates over time. The piece highlights the duality of connectivity in the digital age—on the one hand, technology amplifies human connections, creating shared experiences across generations and cultures; on the other, it exposes the risks of homogenisation, where local identities are diluted by global data flows. Lee’s work is at once poetic and unsettling, a poignant reminder of the emotional and cultural turbulence of life in a hyperconnected world.

Another standout contribution comes from Quayola, whose Jardins d’Été (Summer Garden) (2017) reinterprets the impressionist techniques of Monet through generative algorithms. In this digital landscape the organic and artificial dissolve, suggesting a future where cities and nature coexist in harmony. Quayola’s work pulses with the rhythms of the natural world, reminding viewers that urban environments, like gardens, are shaped by forces of time, growth and decay. This piece serves as a powerful metaphor for the evolving relationship between cities and the natural world, a relationship that Future City Seoul explores in depth.

What sets Future City Seoul apart from other exhibitions is its willingness to engage with the broader implications of urban and technological transformation. By treating the city as a “living gallery”, the exhibition suggests the potential for urban spaces to function as platforms for dialogue, empathy and creativity.

This vision extends beyond the walls of DDP. The programme calls on architects, technologists and artists to reimagine urban spaces as collaborative ecosystems. Instead of viewing buildings and streets as static structures, it proposes treating them as nodes in a network—a system that adapts to human needs and environmental conditions in real-time. For instance, works like CLAUDE & Shin Hyejin's Trial (2022) embody this philosophy by integrating real-time light and sound data into immersive, multisensory environments. Their audiovisual installation transforms these elements into an interactive dialogue, where the presence and movements of the audience directly influence the artwork. It’s less a reflection of the city and more a conversation with it, illustrating how urban spaces can evolve dynamically in response to their inhabitants.

However, the exhibition also asks critical questions about the role of AI in shaping urban life. While generative AI offers unprecedented tools for visualisation and interaction, it raises ethical and cultural concerns. How do we preserve the uniqueness of local identities in a world dominated by global data flows? How can we leverage “small data” strategies to amplify community voices without being overshadowed by the homogenising forces of big data? Lee Jaehyung’s work highlights these tensions, reminding us that technology is as much about choice as it is about possibility.

In its most ambitious moments, Future City Seoul extends beyond aesthetics to tackle pressing global issues like climate change and urban inequality. By integrating ecological data and cultural storytelling, the programme envisions a city that not only functions efficiently but also inspires collective action. It’s a blueprint for urban environments where beauty and sustainability coexist, where art and design serve as bridges between people and their surroundings.

The exhibition’s boldest proposition lies in its redefinition of cities as narratives rather than structures. Each work contributes a chapter to Seoul’s story, transforming the city into a site of endless reinvention. Quayola’s nature-inspired algorithms, Chevalier’s data-driven symphonies and Baak’s psychological dreamscapes all point to a future where cities are not just lived in but actively shaped by their inhabitants.

Seoul isn’t just hosting Future City Seoul—it’s embodying it. By imagining the city as an extended gallery, Future City Seoul offers a compelling vision for the future of cities—a future where beauty, sustainability and humanity are not just aspirations but guiding principles.

As we move forward, the success of this vision will depend on our ability to foster collaboration and inclusivity. Whether through interactive installations, AI-driven art, or sustainable urban planning, the goal is clear: to create cities that inspire, connect and endure. Future City Seoul is a testament to what is possible when we view cities not just as structures but as stories, evolving with the people who inhabit them and the values they choose to uphold.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position of STIR or its editors.)