Abstract
This article claims that the recent mega-scale urban project Design Seoul is a case illustrating the entanglement of institutional interventions onto everyday city space and varying reactions from individual agents of power. Nominated by two international NGOs—the ICSID (International Council of Societies of Industrial Design) and UNESCO—Design Seoul, which lasted roughly from 2007 to 2011, is the first extensive urban project in the history of Korea. In order to make the project move forward, the ministry of Seoul and groups of specialists from different sectors of society attempted to renew the entire city under a number of guiding principles in the hope of making Seoul a brand city. Despite the dominant views that Design Seoul is considered a pivotal exemplar of a top-down model of power in the urban realm, this article claims that such an ostensibly one-directional project in fact operates through more complex patterns of intervention and public experience, in ways that various agents of power related to the project read given design guidelines and practice them in aleatory and creative ways.
