Herald Design Forum 2019 will be held Oct. 10 at Grand Hyatt Seoul, under the slogan “Do We Need Another Planet?”

The forum, now in its ninth year, will invite internationally recognized designers, artists and scientists to discuss issues related to ecology and the environment, as well as prospects for our future.


Opening this year’s forum is a keynote speech by actress Gong Hyo-jin, also an environmental activist who leads a local upcycling project titled “Super Magic Factory.”

Lectures by Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde and Los Angeles County Museum of Art director Michael Govan will continue in the morning.

In the afternoon, Alexander Mankowsky, futurologist at Daimler AG, Ignasi Ribas, researcher at the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia, Turner Prize-winning designer Maria Lisogorskaya and Dutch designer Dave Hakkens will present diverse discourses on ecological issues.

This year’s design forum will feature uplifting music performances in a transformed version of the evening event, now called “Art Night.”

Media artist Bae Jae-hyuck will open Art Night with a talk on recent ecological changes and the changes that the human species will need to make in response, if it is to survive in this “fourth industrial revolution” era.

Bae is a member of the local media art collective teamVOID, which holds exhibitions and introduces artworks that incorporate the latest technologies, including robotics.

Muto, an up-and-coming South Korean musical collective that marries electronic sounds with the sounds of the Korean traditional string instrument “geomungo,” will perform during Art Night.

This year the organizers have designated the week of Oct. 6 Herald Design Week. Accordingly, there will be a range of lectures and discussion sessions where visitors can listen to the experiences of designers working in different industries.

By Shim Woo-hyun (ws@heraldcorp.com)