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In 2010 Seoul will become the World Design Capital. Among the many projects that are happening across the city connected with that is the building of the Dongdaemun Design Plaza & Park (DDPP) to a plan by starkitect Zaha Hadid termed “Metronymic Landscape”. To find out more I visited the DDPP Information Center which sits at the corner of a vast building site where once stood Dongdaemun Stadium. Nearby is the eastern fortress gate that the area is named after – sitting in splendid isolation amid a traffic island – while on the west side is one of Seoul’s liveliest market districts.

When it’s fully completed by the close of 2011, the DDPP will take its place as one of the architectural wonders of the city, a legacy of current Mayor Oh Se-hoon’s drive to make Seoul synonymous with top class design. Standing on the viewing platform of the information center and looking out across the site you have to use quite a bit of imagination to see how it will turn out – all the details are at hand inside via models, illustrative panels and state-of-the-art touch screen displays. The park, occupying around a third of the 160,000 sqm site is on target for completion this October. Running through it will be a section of the Seoul fortress wall and the original flood gates which the public will be able to walk around. Other archaeological remains are going to be preserved as part of the park.

Hadid’s organic form of architecture managed to combine both a very natural and totally futuristic, space-age look – it promises to be every bit as iconic a building as Bilbao’s Guggenheim or Sydney’s Opera House.