Seoul City to Live Stream Design Competition Judging for 'Songpa Creative Innovation Public Housing' on the 28th

The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced on the 21st that it will live broadcast the final judging of the creative innovation public housing design competition to be built on the site of the former Seongdong Detention Center in Songpa-gu.

Songpa Creative Innovation Public Housing Design Competition Poster. [Image provided by Seoul City]

The broadcast will take place on the 28th on the integrated design competition website, ‘Project Seoul.’ Immediately after the final judging, the video of the first round of judging held on the 16th will also be posted.

The Songpa Creative Innovation Public Housing Design Competition was held for about two months starting in June, receiving a total of 11 submissions from domestic and international architects. Five works advanced to the final judging after the first evaluation, which assessed ▲creativity and innovation in housing types ▲themes ▲composition ▲expressiveness ▲completeness.

Through this competition, the city posed questions to participants and society about ‘the future appearance of apartments we will live in’ and ‘the values that future public housing should pursue,’ envisioning sustainable housing that will remain relevant even 100 years from now. Unlike previous competitions, restrictions on the number of units, floor area, and structure were minimized, resulting in many fresh and creative submissions.

The live broadcast of the Songpa Creative Innovation Public Housing Design Competition final judging can be viewed from 9:30 a.m. on the 28th via the ‘Project Seoul’ website. After reviewing relevant regulations for the selected works on that day, the final winners will be announced on the 31st.

Seoul operates a ‘Seoul-type Design Competition’ system that applies various measures during the judging process to ensure fair and excellent design selection. After a ‘technical review’ that checks for violations of laws and guidelines in the works, participants are given a period to explain their ideas or opinions.

Previously, only one pre-judging committee meeting was held after the design competition announcement, but to improve judging quality, from this year, two meetings are held before and after the announcement. Before the announcement, judges conduct thorough site investigations to establish expert judging directions and evaluation criteria, which are specified in the competition guidelines, clearly presenting the direction of architectural planning. After the announcement, a pre-meeting is held to discuss the project objectives and judging directions. Additionally, the previous method of only releasing the second round judging video on the Project Seoul website has been improved to now disclose all judging processes from both the first and second rounds.

Seoul plans to solidify the foundation of the ‘Seoul-type Design Competition’ by formalizing the improvements trialed in the June ‘Digital Finance Support Center (Yeouido) Design Competition,’ the August ‘Songpa Creative Innovation Public Housing Design Competition,’ and the October ‘Seoul Metropolitan Library (Dongdaemun) Design Competition.’

Hong Seon-gi, Director of Future Space Planning at Seoul City, said, “This design competition is as important for its process as for its results, and it will be an interesting opportunity to see various proposals on how participants have addressed questions about future housing.” He added, “We will continue to realize fair and transparent judging through the ‘Seoul-type Design Competition’ and discover creative design plans.”

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