Sung Hong Kim is Professor Emeritus of architecture and urbanism at the University of Seoul. He studied architecture at Hanyang University in Seoul (B.S.), and as a recipient of a Korean Government Overseas Scholarship, he continued his studies at the University of California at Berkeley (M.Arch.) and Georgia Tech (Ph.D.). During his tenure at the University of Seoul (1997–2025), he was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the University of Washington in 2006, and served as Provost of the Planning and Research Office from 2007 to 2009.
He participated as a Co-Commissioner of the exhibition, “City of the Bang” for the Korean Pavilion in 2004. He organized the exhibition “Megacity Network: Contemporary Korean Architecture”, which traveled to Frankfurt, Berlin, Tallinn, Barcelona, and Seoul from 2007 to 2010. As director, he curated “The FAR Game: Constraints Sparking Creativity” for the Korean Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Biennale.
Prof. Kim has authored numerous books on Seoul’s architecture and urbanism, including Seoul Solution (Korean, 2020), The FAR Game (SPACE Books, 2016), Street Corner Architecture (Korean, 2011), New Imagination of Urban Architecture (Korean, 2009), and Contemporary Korean Architecture: Megacity Network (Jovis Verlag, 2007, Co-author & Editor). His forthcoming book, Seoul Urban Architecture: Rising from the Crushing Bowl, will be released in bookstores in Spring 2026 by Park Books in Zurich.
Since 2012, he has been invited to lecture on Seoul’s urban architecture at universities and institutions worldwide. Since 2021, Prof. Kim has been serving as the director of curation for the inaugural exhibition Korean Urban Architecture, 1950-2010: Building Life After the Korean War at Korea’s first and largest National Museum of Urbanism and Architecture, scheduled to open in Spring 2027.