《Caring by Design》, on view at Culture Station Seoul 284 through November 1, 2026, examines the labor and relationships that sustain the spaces of everyday life. It expands the scope of public design beyond the creation of new places and facilities to include their ongoing maintenance and care.
 
Hosted by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Heritage Service, and organized by the Korea Craft & Design Foundation, the exhibition is led by curator Dahyoung Chung. Chung is a member of CAC (Curating Architecture Collective), which curated the Korean Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale.
 
Featuring 33 works by 20 artists, designers, and collaborative teams from Korea and abroad, the exhibition brings together photography, sculpture, installation, video, and architectural models. Its four sections—“Sweeping, Wiping, Erasing,” “Tending Architecture,” “Caring for the City,” and “Invisible Labor”—move from everyday acts to buildings and cities, and to the people who maintain them.
 
Here, care extends beyond interpersonal consideration and welfare. It is also a spatial practice: tending to buildings, objects, landscapes, and everyday environments so that they can continue to serve their purpose. Public space does not fulfill its public role simply by being declared open to everyone. It must remain safe to access and comfortable to inhabit. The exhibition brings the work of sustaining these conditions into the scope of design.
 
One participant who articulates this perspective particularly clearly is the Finnish architectural practice Vokal. Founded by Ella Kaira and Matti Jänkälä, Vokal explores existing buildings, adaptive reuse, and the transformation of spaces in collaboration with local communities.
 
Its audiovisual installation draws on The Pavilion – Architecture of Stewardship, the exhibition Kaira and Jänkälä curated for the Finnish Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale.

The work focuses on the Finnish Pavilion, designed by Alvar Aalto and his office and built in 1956. Vokal examines how three major restorations and decades of maintenance have enabled the building to endure. Moving images and sound convey memories embedded in the pavilion, recognizing construction workers, caretakers, cleaners, and restoration architects alongside its designers as contributors to the building’s continuing life.
 
Andrés Jaque’s work likewise examines the systems of maintenance behind architecture’s polished surfaces. PHANTOM. Mies as Rendered Society, a project by his practice, the Office for Political Innovation, investigates the Barcelona Pavilion.
 
The basement of the reconstructed pavilion housed equipment, replaced materials, and objects needed for its upkeep. Jaque brought some of these items into the spaces above, revealing the materials and activities usually excluded from the building’s public image.

Viewed within the context of this exhibition, Jaque’s project invites us to reconsider what we include when looking at architecture. When the tools, equipment, and spaces of labor that sustain an orderly environment become visible, a building emerges as a complex social setting shaped by ongoing work.
 
Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s participation adds an art-historical dimension to these concerns. In her 1969 ‘Manifesto for Maintenance Art’, Ukeles asserted the importance of the activities that sustain everyday life and society. Her practice has brought domestic work, care, cleaning, and urban sanitation into the realm of art. In her landmark Touch Sanitation Performance of 1979–80, she met approximately 8,500 New York City sanitation workers. This earlier project provides a broader context for her longstanding exploration of maintenance, care, and labor.
 
The Korean participants carry these questions into local experiences of architecture, the city, and the body. Architect Lee Byungyeob and choreographer Cha Jinyeob’s collaborative work Pyeongpyeong draws on ‘kongdaem’, a traditional method of treating and maintaining paper flooring. The technique involves grinding soaked soybeans, mixing them with oil, and applying the mixture to the floor, emphasizing the physical acts of working with materials and tending a surface.

The installation reconfigures ‘kongdaem’-treated hanji flooring that approximately 200 participants tended over 208 hours during an earlier exhibition, grinding soybeans and rubbing the mixture into its surface. An accompanying program invites visitors to grind soybeans, care for the paper floor, and explore the relationship between body and ground through simple movements. The floor becomes both a support for the artwork and a surface that accumulates the time and gestures of many people.

Photographer KIM Taedong presents portraits of caretakers and construction workers he encountered while documenting architecture. Landscape architect Jung Youngsun’s Seonyudo Park archive and Mid-Size City Forum’s work on architecture and regional decline offer distinct perspectives on cities and local change. Together, these works extend the scope of care beyond individual buildings to urban infrastructure and the transformation of communities.
 
“Public Design Docking Stations” throughout the exhibition connect the questions raised by the artworks to public policy and civic practice. The west corridor on the first floor presents this year’s Korea Public Design Award winners, while the “Public Design Lounge” in the second-floor Grill introduces developments in public design through reference materials and past award-winning projects.
 
The projects presented include a community safety design initiative in Hangangno-dong, Yongsan-gu, developed through resident participation; the “Children’s Room of Tomorrow” at Dujeong Library in Cheonan; and an inclusive, barrier-free playground in Paju. These examples demonstrate how public design addresses safety, accessibility, and the everyday experiences of different users, alongside the physical appearance of a place.

《Caring by Design》 introduces the dimension of time into how we assess public space. Alongside the visual impact of a completed project, it asks whether people can continue to use it comfortably and what forms of labor and relationships make this possible. Care emerges as both the practical work of maintaining a space and an attentiveness to the lives of those who share it. The exhibition directs our attention from the artworks to the building around them, and outward to the everyday spaces of the city.

Culture Station Seoul 284
 
Culture Station Seoul 284 is a multidisciplinary cultural venue that opened in 2011 following the restoration of the former Seoul Station building. Completed in 1925 as Gyeongseong Station, the building was renamed Seoul Station in 1947. After the new station opened in 2004, the old building ceased operating as a railway station. Restoration work carried out between 2009 and 2011 restored its original architectural features and prepared it for use as a cultural venue. The number “284” refers to the former station’s historic site designation number.
 
 
 
Exhibition Information
 
Title: 《Caring by Design》
Dates: September 17–November 1, 2026
Venue: Culture Station Seoul 284, Floors 1–2
Address: 1 Tongil-ro, Jung-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday, 10:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.; Wednesdays, 10:00 a.m.–7:00 p.m.
Last admission: 30 minutes before closing
Closed: Mondays and Chuseok Day
Admission: Free
Hosted by: Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism; Korea Heritage Service
Organized by: Korea Craft & Design Foundation
Lead Curator: Dahyoung Chung (CAC)
Curators: Heejung Kim, Sungkyu Jung
Inquiries: +82-2-3407-3506
Website: Culture Station Seoul 284—Official Exhibition Information