Seoul Design Foundation, DDP Special Exhibition <Meta-Horizons: The Future Now> Runs Through September 18

Zaha Hadid's Future Architectural Technologies, Including Digital Media and VR

The Seoul Design Foundation (CEO Lee Kyung-don, hereinafter the Foundation) is presenting 'Meta-Horizons: The Future Now' at the DDP Design Museum through September 18, co-organized with Zaha Hadid Architects (hereinafter ZHA, CEO Patrik Schumacher).

The Design Museum's first special exhibition, <Meta-Horizons: The Future Now>, is themed around 'Innovation, Imagination, and Interaction.' It showcases the design outcomes and processes achieved by Zaha Hadid, a world-renowned architect who pursued future-oriented design by exploring across the boundaries of past and present, the virtual and the real, and different genres.

The exhibition unpacks ZHA's questions—such as "How many opportunities would we gain if we could work simultaneously in the virtual world and the real world?" and "How many possibilities can the development of digital design tools open up for us?"—across three sections of the exhibition hall.

The exhibition hall organically connects three sections: <Innovation - Process & Research>, <Imagination – Design & Virtual>, and <Interaction – Technologies>. The exhibited works consist of study models, prototypes, large-scale wall projections and videos, and VR content. The works are centered on research projects carried out by ZHA's various research teams (the ZHACODE team, ZHA SOCIAL team, ZHA A+I team, and ZHVR team).

Every ZHA work presented in this exhibition embodies ZHA's philosophy of preparing for the future. ZHA's works are the fruits of collaboration with experts from a wide range of fields beyond architecture, and they have long reflected future-oriented materials such as digital technology, the metaverse, blockchain, AI, eco-friendliness, and VR. Rather than being merely a spectacle of cutting-edge technology, ZHA's exhibition moves visitors in that it seeks a better future.

In particular, the <Interaction – Technologies> section presents Architecting the Metaverse_RAS×ZHA (2022), a work created in collaboration between Refik Anadol Studio (hereinafter RAS: Refik Anadol Studio) and ZHA. This section was completed through a collaboration between ZHA and Refik Anadol Studio (hereinafter RAS: Refik Anadol Studio), who came together through the DDP.

ZHA was involved in the architectural design of the DDP (2014), and RAS took part in Seoul Light (2019–2020). On this basis, the Seoul Design Foundation, which operates the DDP, proposed a collaboration between ZHA and RAS, and the project came to fruition. It offers a wonderful opportunity to encounter, in one place, two designers who are drawing attention in their respective fields of architecture and media art.

The Immersive Room, part of the space in the final section, unfolds media art that envelops the entire space, offering visitors a fully immersive experience. The Immersive Room is filled with works created based on RAS's interpretation, through AI, of all the design data ZHA has produced to date. This is the same artificial intelligence method RAS used in its first exhibition at the DDP in 2019, when it presented a work reinterpreting Seoul's history and culture using machine learning (a technology through which computers learn on their own to advance artificial intelligence) applied to millions of social media images at the time.

This section also lets visitors experience an evolved, new form of viewing. The work <Project Correl 1.0 (2018)> is a VR piece in which visitors participate to design buildings in a digital space. Up to four visitors can connect simultaneously to try designing a building over the course of the exhibition. Produced through collaboration among ZHA's virtual reality research teams, this work is a new attempt that breaks away from conventional media-viewing methods, in which viewers had to be content merely with looking at the content.

The Foundation stated that it planned this exhibition to drive design innovation through convergence, to address socially pressing issues, and to design and propose a better future. The heads of the institutions that led the collaborative exhibition shared their thoughts on the exhibition as follows.

Patrik Schumacher, CEO of ZHA, said, "I am delighted to return to a building we designed for a new exhibition," adding, "Collaboration and research are activities that embody ZHA's fundamental philosophy, and we hold a firm belief in a collective, multidisciplinary approach to problem-solving. I hope this exhibition conveys ZHA's philosophy to people."

Refik Anadol, head of RAS, said, "The inspiration for our works always stems from our interest in learning about innovation across diverse fields," and added, "I am very pleased to have experienced, through this project, just how rewarding an open-minded, collaborative exchange can be."

Lee Kyung-don, CEO of the Seoul Design Foundation, remarked, "Going forward, the DDP plans to present a variety of multidisciplinary, multisensory design research works. I ask for citizens' keen interest in and high expectations for this exhibition, which incorporates new experiments, and for the DDP, which has opened a new chapter as a 'digital design platform.'"