Letters to the Mayor

Building geopolitical bridges through the act of engaging city mayors.

In collaboration with the Storefront for Art and Architecture, more than 50 architects, planners, policy makers and artists were invited to write letters to the Mayor of Seoul and Pyongyang. Amidst the backdrop of geopolitical tensions on the Korean Peninsula in 2017, the letters were written to address the most pressing issue facing the two cities, that of peace resolution.

Letters to the Mayor is an itinerant exhibition that displays real letters written by architects to their city mayors. Initiated by Storefront for Art and Architecture in 2014, the project has travelled to more than 15 cities across the globe.

The initiative of writing letters is a means of bringing innovative ideas and visions of the city closer to the decision-makers, and vice versa, and simultaneously into the public consciousness.

The letters to mayors of Seoul and Pyongyang were first exhibited at the 2017 Seoul Biennale and sent to both the mayoral office in Seoul and the People’s Committee in Pyongyang. Following up on the engagement was a meeting with the Mayor of Seoul at the 2018 World Cities Summit in Singapore and a series of training programs and workshops in Pyongyang.


Year 2017 Location Seoul, South Korea Collaborators Storefront for Art and Architecture, PRAUD, Nameless Architect Client Mayor of Seoul & Pyongyang Status Completed