The Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) is a cultural hub in the centre of Seoulto showcase design in all its forms. It was commissioned by the city government of Seoul to revamp this historic quarter next to the ancient city walls which in the twentieth century consecutively accommodated a railway station and a baseball stadium.

It was conceived by Zaha Hadid Architects as an architectural landscape that revolves around the ancient city wall and cultural artefacts discovered during archaeological excavations preceding DDP's construction. These historic features are meant to form the central element of DDP's composition with linking the park, plaza and city together.

DDP is the first public project in Korea to utilize the 3-Dimensional Building Information Modelling (BIM) and other digital tools in construction. Throughout the design process, every building requirement was considered as a set of inter-related spatial relationships which will define the social interactions and behavioural structure in/around the project. These relationships became the framework of the design, defining how different aspects of the project, such as spatial organization, programmatic requirements, and engineering come together.