SH Corporation Leads the Way in Establishing a Transparent Design Competition Evaluation Culture

[Asia Economy Reporter Onyu Lim] Seoul Housing and Communities Corporation (SH Corporation) is taking steps to establish a proper design competition evaluation culture to supply public housing with innovative designs.

Following the real-time disclosure of the entire architectural design competition process last year, SH Corporation announced on the 21st that it will build a paperless digital evaluation environment this year to reduce the burden on participating architects and continue to expand a fair and transparent design competition evaluation culture.

SH Corporation established operational standards for architectural design competitions in September last year to publicly disclose the entire evaluation process in real time on the corporation’s Facebook page for all design competition projects with an estimated design fee of 100 million KRW or more. Starting with the “Magok Public Knowledge Industry Center and Construction-type Challenge Dormitory Complex Development Project Design Competition Evaluation,” it has recently implemented this for the “Gangil Seoul Compact City International Design Competition.”

In particular, the evaluation for the Gangil Seoul Compact City International Design Competition was successfully completed by conducting non-face-to-face video conferences and live streaming the process on YouTube amid the challenging environment caused by COVID-19 restrictions on foreign judges’ entry and exit, laying the foundation for creating a real-time non-face-to-face digital evaluation environment.

SH Corporation plans to fully apply real-time non-face-to-face digital evaluations to all design competition projects by preparing digital competition evaluation guidelines and establishing a digital evaluation environment within the corporation’s office building in the first half of next year.

Kim Seyong, President of SH Corporation, said, “Last year, the corporation took the lead in fostering a fair and transparent design competition evaluation culture by live streaming the entire evaluation process on social media,” adding, “We expect that creating a real-time non-face-to-face digital evaluation environment will reduce various costs such as producing evaluation documents and activate architects’ participation.”