Seoul Living and Design Fair

While riding the metro one morning I happened to spot a banner for a the 2012 Seoul Living Design Fair over at the large Coex Mall, which is a place most awesome expos are held here ♥ This years theme was “Art at Home”

I love interior design and furniture like Kartell, Herman Miller, or anything really interesting in general~ modern, retro, whatever! Our old apt in CA had a Noguchi table and a retro-style GIANT fiberglass white ball chair with red lining~ they are in storage atm… ahhh I miss our ball chair! They are SO cozy~

♥ ♥ ♥

Anyway, over the years Nara has really gotten into furniture and decor too~ so we both got excited to check out this show! Its nice when you dont have to drag an unwilling boyfriend to something lol. We wanted to see what they would be showcasing and take down some brand names to look into when we finally moved back home because in Korea its SOOOO much easier and cheaper to find contemporary-looking furniture and fun house goodies that dont cost an arm and a leg!

The Seoul Living and Design Fair is annual expo event in Korea since about 2005 it seems. It claims to be Asia’s biggest living business fair with over 200 representative companies (most Korean brands, or collaborations with designers and Korea) with the goal of showcasing the new and modern “Korean living culture” and giving the public a chance to few these designs in person first-hand. The expo represents Korea’s best contemporary designs and the best brand selection of products by Korean Lifestyle/Design magazine editors all under one roof.

Tickets cost 10,000 won ($10 each) to Enter for one day, but I believe we got a student hook up from one of Nara’s cousins so it was a bit cheaper. Entering the expo gave you the opportunity to view all the showrooms, but with many brands you could order floor samples of pieces or get a special deal on things if you planned to buy + they had several pop-up shops.

Because we went on the final day of the expo it was PACKED full for the first few hours… only at the end did it finally start to clear out and give us a bit of breathing room! It was a real range of people, lots of designers and artists (we can smell our own lol), young couples, students, families looking for “fancy” things to buy for the new house, and random 아줌마 looking lost or annoyed at the thought of a $1000 lamp.

The fair was pretty big, it took us maybe 3+ hours to walk through slowly and admire + snap photos, but the people we came with blew through it in an hour max~ I guess it depends on your interest in these sorts of things!

The Seoul Living and Design Fair was interesting overall, because it was a nice mix of modern contemporary furniture with lots of natural and organic elements, textures, etc that Koreans are very fond of. They have a unique taste for design here that you start to notice after a while, I wish I could explain it better *_* They also had lots of cute smaller art shops, tec goodies, nicnacs, and some student work that was pretty innovative!