Gwangju City Promotes Landscape Improvement Project Around Biennale Exhibition Hall

Gwangju City Hall

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Park Seon-gang] Gwangju Metropolitan City announced on the 22nd that it will promote a landscape improvement project around the Biennale Exhibition Hall to enhance the international status of the Gwangju Biennale, one of the world's top five biennales, and to develop it as a cultural tourism attraction.

This project, selected for the first time this year as part of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism's pilot project "International Cultural and Arts Event Hosting City Visual Image Improvement Project," will invest 4.6 billion KRW (2.3 billion KRW from the national government and 2.3 billion KRW from the city).

The main project contents include ▲a media facade project that projects media art videos on the exterior walls of the Biennale Exhibition Hall to improve the nightscape ▲a public design project to create an artistic space around the Biennale Exhibition Hall by installing glass walls on the rear of Exhibition Hall 3 and demolishing the existing fence in the plaza to create lighting sculptures and rest areas.

Additionally, ▲a project to create a welcoming structure (welcome sign) and an art-themed bus stop at the entrance and exit of the Biennale Exhibition Hall ▲a pedestrian-friendly public design project linked to the Biennale Plaza that widens sidewalks on adjacent roads and refurbishes the design of the roundabout ▲a project to establish a symbolic street with night lighting and symbolic lighting from the Biennale main gate to the Kookmin Bank intersection to build a city brand image linked to the Biennale will be carried out.

Among these, the Biennale art-themed bus stop and welcoming structure project will involve British industrial designer Karim Rashid, who has won the Daimler Chrysler Award, and American graphic designer Paula Scher, who created the CNN and CTI Bank logos.

Gwangju City, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Buk-gu Office, the Municipal Art Museum, and the Gwangju Biennale Foundation have coordinated details through several working-level meetings and finalized the basic plan last August to promote this project.

Of the five projects, the public design project to create an artistic space around the Biennale Exhibition Hall will be ordered by Gwangju City, while the other four projects will be ordered by Buk-gu Office within this year, aiming to complete the projects before the opening of the 13th Gwangju Biennale, which was postponed to February next year due to COVID-19.

Kim Jun-young, Director of the Culture, Tourism and Sports Office of Gwangju City, said, "We will continuously improve the landscape around the Gwangju Biennale Exhibition Hall and the National Asia Culture Center to create an artistic urban landscape befitting Gwangju as the Asian cultural hub city."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.