SEOUL, July 23 (AJP) - A South Korean university design team was invited to Germany this month to show its work on public transportation for people who struggle to get around, one of a set of campus research projects gathered for an exhibition tied to the world's biennial design capital program.
Kookmin University's Department of Automotive and Transportation Design took part in the World Design Capital Campus Exhibition 2026 Frankfurt on July 3 at the Museum Angewandte Kunst. The event is organized by the World Design Organization (WDO), which selects a World Design Capital every two years. Frankfurt holds the title for 2026, and Busan in South Korea was chosen for 2028.
The Frankfurt exhibition is built around university research rather than commercial products. It gathers next-generation design projects from campuses worldwide and pairs the displays with presentations and a lecture program.
The invitation came out of a project Kookmin completed in 2025 with the Genesis Design Innovation Division at Hyundai Motor, titled "Human-Centered Public Mobility Service Design Based on Future Smart Cities." The university shared those results with Hyundai Motor's European design center, the University of Art and Design Offenbach and WDO officials, who cited the project's originality in extending the invitation.
At the museum, the department showed a concept video and panels explaining the project, along with scale models and a three-dimensional terrain map of the target area. Kookmin's Noh Jae-seung, who led the research, walked through the project's aims, its development and its outcome during a Design Talk session held the day after the opening.
The work centers on what transportation planners call the last mile, the short final stretch of a journey that public transit often fails to cover. For older riders, people with disabilities and residents of areas with thin transit service, that gap can decide whether a trip happens at all.
Hyundai Motor's Genesis Design Innovation Division said it wanted to deliver mobility solutions that could actually be used by people who have difficulty moving around and by communities cut off from transit. "In order to create a city where anyone can move freely, we sought to improve not only mobility design but also physical and digital infrastructure, and even the invisible service experience," the division said. It described the collaboration as a valuable chance to search for answers alongside Kookmin students, and said it would continue projects aimed at free mobility for everyone, including those inconvenienced on last-mile trips.
Dorothée Bolade, membership engagement manager at the WDO, said Kookmin's participation showed the value of design schools communicating and connecting across borders, together with the involvement of international educational institutions working with the organization. She said the group works so that universities worldwide can share ideas, sustain academic exchange and cooperation, and consider the future of design together. She added that she hoped such exchange would carry through to the World Design Assembly in Seoul in 2027 and to Busan as the 2028 World Design Capital.
Noh called the invitation meaningful recognition of the joint work with Hyundai. He said the company's active support allowed designers and students to stay in close contact through repeated feedback and design reviews while shaping user-centered mobility scenarios for future megacities.
"Since Busan has been selected as the 2028 World Design Capital, it would carry even greater meaning if we could build on this project and present a more developed outcome tailored to the regional characteristics of Busan," Noh said.
The project is also documented on Open Design Lab, the platform Hyundai Motor uses to publish its future mobility design research, where the theme, process and final results are available in detail.
Copyright ⓒ Aju Press All rights reserved.