Flagship of the four Asian dragons that are shaking up the world’s geopolitics of the 21st century, South Korea has benefited but also suffered from the consequences of an aggressive and dazzling Modernity. With an exuberant economic growth, the social and environmental capital of Korea was so brutally mutated that a peculiar expertise emerged from its resilience need: Community Design. Korean social engineering dynamics is nowadays one of the most stimulating phenomena observed in Asia, reflecting the culture but also the suffering of autochthonous (“native to the place where found”) communities disorientated by a globalized and speculative economy and stripped of their relations to the land, culture and time.
Although extremely active, the numbers of stakeholders in the revitalization of communities and the management of their resilience are exploding without however being able to generate overviews that would facilitate cohesion and efficiency. Accordingly, this research aims to draft an inventory of the Community Design pedagogies which guide the Design Diplomacy Seminar in Seoul.
Seminar participants will visit various Seoul locations where the revitalization and management of communities are developed, to meet Community Designers, Urban Sociologists, Landscape Architects & Architects Civil Society Activists, and other various stakehodlers.