Revitalizing the Emerging Market via Design - focused on Shinheung Art Market

Shinheung Market at Haebangchon, or Liberation Village, is a hidden gem in the middle of Seoul, situated at an accessible location with Namsan mountain to the north and a beautiful view of the Han River and Seoul. Haebangchon is a neighborhood that opened the doors to Korea's industrialization, and Shinheung Market symbolizes the ups and downs of Korea’s knit industry, which thrived in the 1970s with the country’s industrialization but experienced a steep decline in the 1990s. This study sets out to reclaim Shinheung Market’s identity and to revive it into a creative and artistic space as Seoul’s new and upcoming ‘art market.’ For this purpose, interviews were conducted with the existing merchants at Shinheung Market, the young merchants who have chosen Shinheung Market as their home and fixed up old shops into their workplaces, as well as the foreigner in the neighborhood who make up a large portion of the residents. Traditional markets are commercial and social assets and, at the same time, a part of a city’s spiritual legacy. In this sense, renewing the design of traditional markets should retain their original elements while reconfiguring the space into a ‘hot place’ where people of diverse cultures can naturally merge. Therefore, this paper proposes to revive Shinheung Market through 1) a new brand identity design; 2) a spatial design which reflects the history and story of Shinheung Market’s knit factories; 3) an information center for providing an informed introduction to the market and a meeting space and workshop where knitting craftsmen and various creators can meet and gather.