Humanise Wall and Walls of Public Life. Image © Heatherwick Studio
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https://www.archdaily.com/1032888/seoul-biennale-2025-reveals-walls-of-public-life-installation-designers
The 2025 edition of the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism has announced the 24 designers commissioned to create the Walls of Public Life, a collective installation that explores how the exteriors of buildings can become more expressive, engaging, and emotionally resonant. Each contributor will produce a 2.4 by 4.8-meter building fragment, offering a reimagining of the architectural wall not as a backdrop, but as an active participant in public life. Installed along the north side of Songhyeon Green Plaza in central Seoul, the walls will form part of a larger urban intervention that includes the Humanise Wall, a four-storey, 90-meter-long installation to the south of the park.
Humanise Wall and Walls of Public Life. Image © Heatherwick Studio
The project’s curatorial direction, led by General Director Thomas Heatherwick, frames these walls as provocations, each suggesting new possibilities for the outer layers of buildings. Rather than the neutral, flat surfaces that dominate many urban skylines, the walls present a diverse range of architectural expressions, encouraging both the public and the industry to reimagine how cities might look, feel, and function.
Reflecting an interdisciplinary approach, the list of contributors ranges beyond architecture to include artists, artisans, designers, engineers, and chefs. Among them are Kengo Kuma & Associates, MAD Architects, Hawkins\Brown, Anupama Kundoo Architects, Amateur Architecture Studio (Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu), Kéré Architecture, NAMELESS Architecture, YOAP Architects, Moreless Architects, Anomalia, SOSU Architects, Bureau de Change, Arup, and a.co.lab. The lineup also features practices and individuals working outside conventional architecture, such as the Korean Furniture Museum, jeweller Stephen Webster, tailor Ozwald Boateng, artist Yinka Shonibare, and chef Edward Lee.
Related Article Seoul Biennale, Curated by Thomas Heatherwick, Unveils Citizen-Led Projects to Reimagine Urban Life 
Kéré Architecture’s Walls of Public Life. Image © Kéré Architecture
Several contributors bring expertise in materials and manufacturing, including Hankuk Carbon and Hyundai Motor Company. Cultural and community-based approaches are represented by Burkinabè artisans Bapossan Alempoua and Asseta Idogo, who revive the painted wall traditions of Tiébélé, and by Ronald Rael, whose work often reinterprets construction and craft through social commentary.
Each wall will explore different ways of provoking an emotional response through materials, texture, color, and narrative. Some reinterpret vernacular craft, others play with ornament or structural form. One wall by NAMELESS Architecture reassembles broken bricks and stones, while Stephen Webster’s design uses thorns and jewels to create a striking tactile surface. Francis Kéré‘s contribution, meanwhile, uses Korean pine to construct a communal structure, while another bridges local heritage with the West African building traditions of Tiébélé, interpreted through Korean clay.
More Less Architects’ Walls of Public Life. Image © More Less Architects
Running from September 26 to November 18, the 2025 Seoul Biennale will span multiple venues, including Songhyeon Green Plaza and the Seoul Hall of Urbanism & Architecture. Alongside the installations, the Biennale will host four curated exhibitions, a range of public engagement events, and a major two-day international forum titled Emotional City. Gathering 400 participants from around the world, the forum will investigate how cities affect people and their social interactions, and how design can better respond to these emotional dimensions.
Edward Lee’s Walls of Public Life. Image © Heatherwick Studio
Heatherwick‘s role as General Director of the 2025 Seoul Biennale aligns with his wider efforts to shape more emotionally engaging and human-focused architecture. Alongside curating this year’s Biennale, Heatherwick Studio is advancing several major projects in Asia. In Seoul, the studio has been appointed as the design partner for the redevelopment of the Yeouido Daegyo Apartments, its first residential project in South Korea, and was recently selected to lead the redesign of the Coex Convention Centre, reimagining one of the city’s key civic landmarks. Meanwhile, in Bangkok, Heatherwick Studio has unveiled Hatai, a mixed-use development marking its first project in Thailand.