Design Miami Seoul returns bigger with global galleries and Korean craft

Design Miami Seoul, the now-annual fair hosted by the titular global design forum that also stages events in Miami and Paris, is back for its 2026 edition with a new theme: “Resonance.” The event opened Monday at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) in central Seoul, marking its second year at the landmark cultural hub.

The show starts from the premise that materials carry things themselves. Memory, technique, the hand of whoever did the work — all resonate through an object after the object is finished, and resonate again when someone in another century picks the method back up.

The fair is organized around such encounters with designed objects, in which one material “answers” for another, or a traditional process turns up in an unexpected place, according to the event's curatorial team.

“Design is never simply a beautiful object," said Cha Kang-heui, CEO of the Seoul Design Foundation, in his opening remarks at a press conference marking the opening of Design Miami Seoul 2026 at the DDP. “It bridges different times and places, carries memory, knowledge and emotion, and creates new relationships and cultural resonance between people.”

One participating designer, Lee Hae-mi, frames the event’s theme, “Resonance,” as a function of time — tradition is an ongoing conversation between past and present, and resonance is what the conversation leaves behind.

Another designer, LEJE, who designed K-pop idol Jennie’s all-white gown for her Melon Music Awards performance last year, prints a furniture design in 3-D and finishes it with mother-of-pearl inlay and natural lacquer applied by hand, taking upward of 300 hours per piece. Yet another, Kwon Jung-mo, rebuilds a hanok (traditional Korean house) window in hanji (traditional Korean paper), walnut, brass and LEDs.

This year’s Design Miami Seoul is a larger beast than last year’s, which featured only the “In Situ” program, the main exhibit that introduced Korean designers to whoever walked in. That program has widened to embrace 36 designers and studios from Korea, Taiwan and Japan. It is joined by the fair’s first “Galleries” section, featuring six galleries from eight cities around the world, including New York, London and Barcelona.

“Our first edition exceeded every expectation, and we returned this year with real momentum,” said Jen Roberts, CEO of Design Miami. “And for the first time, we’re launching a gallery program alongside the second edition of ‘In Situ.’ That’s the clearest signal we can give. Seoul isn’t a one-off for us; it’s a market we are building for the long term.”

“We have moved beyond the showcase introducing Korean designers to the world and have grown into a collectible design fair,” Cha elaborated. “This is a place where global galleries, designers, collectors and brands come together in Seoul to view and acquire exceptional work and to shape new conversations and new businesses.”

Design Miami’s calendar now begins in Korea, before Paris and Miami. The venue helps: Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid designed the DDP and was Design Miami’s inaugural recipient of the Designer of the Year award.

Samsung Electronics, the lead partner, is showing a series pairing 14 Korean artists with custom frames for its S95 OLED television. Mauro Porcini, its chief design officer, was asked how a firm selling to billions of consumers reconciles itself with a fair built on singular objects and experimental design.

“We need to find the right balance between a product that needs to reach billions of people in different categories, but also with the need of these people to use our products, technology, to express themselves, to differentiate themselves,” Porcini said. “In the world of technology, there is one common language, the language of minimalism, essentiality, that is making the industry very uniform. So we are trying to break away from that kind of uniformity, creating more variation, platforms that can be customized.”

“It’s that tension that we need to explore between mass market and customization if we want to be human-centered, as we do,” Porcini emphasized.

Design talks follow on Thursday.

This year’s Design Miami Seoul fair runs concurrently with Frieze Seoul and Kiaf, two of Seoul’s biggest art fairs.

The partnership between Design Miami and the Seoul Design Foundation has been extended for the foreseeable future, Roberts confirmed.

“Our partnership is very much a deep one that we hope to see the fair continue but grow in a meaningful way,” she said.

BY LIM JEONG-WON [[email protected]]