Thirteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

This paper examines recent attempts of the Seoul Metropolitan Government, South Korea, to enroll citizens into city planning and design activity. Specifically, I focus on a particular case of the Seoul Design Governance public works program which was officially launched in 2015 by the Public Communication Bureau and Seoul City’s design policy division. The program involves Seoul citizens and representatives from the South Korean design industry and aims to activate citizen participation in re-designing and improvement of public spaces. My analysis starts from the paradox that, although citizen participation and design activity are defining traits of participatory design(PD), there are only a few explicit discussions in the PD literature of what constitutes these activities (Andersen et al, 2015). Thus, from the point of departure in Actor-Networking Theory (ANT), and based on the case study of the ‘Seoul Design Governance’ participatory design project, I develop an analytical understanding of participation. Using (1) ethnographic evidence from participant observation at a Seoul Design Governance ‘Talk Talk Show’, and (2) data from public toilet redesign project, I examine the emergence of citizens as new design practitioners, and argue that their participatory activity should be understood not as a stand-alone practice leading to a tangible design outcome, but as a network configuration involving a wide range of actors. I explore layers of mediation considering not only the role of citizens, but also the role of government structures, social designers, and other non-human actors influencing the design outcome.