The Seoul Design Foundation announced that from August 28 to September 14, the ‘2025 DDP Design & Art’ will be held at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP), featuring large outdoor installations and exhibitions by emerging designers.
This exhibition, themed ‘Movement & Senses, Moments Created by Movement,’ will showcase large outdoor installation works by world-renowned artists, including French kinetic artist Vincent Leroy and Australian interactive art studio ENESS.
Leroy’s ‘Molecular Cloud’ consists of 56 spinning pink balloons, each 1.5 meters in size, adding a dreamy color to the monochrome DDP. ENESS’s ‘Pool Teacher’ is a large balloon sculpture that reacts to the movements of the audience with four characters up to 10 meters tall, responding with LED lights, water jets, and sound.
Starting September 1, the ‘Garden of Creation’ exhibition will be held on the DDP Design Trail. This is a curated exhibition that combines art furniture, lighting, and objects by 35 young Korean designers with botanic art spaces, highlighting the future potential of Korean design.
The Seoul Design Foundation will operate the ‘DDP Autumn Special Tour’ in conjunction with this exhibition. Under the theme ‘Design Experience: From Streets to Galleries,’ this program allows visitors to compare and experience touchable design and collectible design. The tour will run every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 3 PM from August 28 to September 13, with a first-come, first-served registration for 20 people per session.
During the exhibition, a variety of indoor content will also be available. ‘Design Miami,’ a design-centered collection fair, will be held for the first time in Asia at DDP, alongside the crystal sculpture exhibition ‘Spectral Crossings.’ The strong contrast between refined indoor content and outdoor experiential sculptures is expected to stimulate the senses of visitors.
Since its first outdoor exhibition in 2023, ‘Design & Art’ has become a representative design festival in Seoul, attracting 100,000 visitors in the same year and 180,000 in 2024. The exhibition configuration, which reflects the spatial characteristics of DDP such as parks, trails, and grassy hills, provides a new art experience in the city.
Cha Kang-hee, CEO of the Seoul Design Foundation, stated, “DDP is a space where world-class design and art are shared with Seoul citizens. This exhibition, along with ‘Design Miami,’ will serve as an opportunity for Seoul to rise as a global design hub.”