Seoul Windows
BOOK LAUNCH / EXHIBITION
Michele Foti
Sept 23rd - Nov 29th 2025
Spazio - Via Lazzaro Spallanzani 19, 20129 Milan
Seoul Windows is a photographic project by Michele Foti that portrays the capital of South Korea through the windows of its buildings. From high-rise apartments to commercial buildings, office towers, and structures on the verge of demolition, each distinct window has become both a lens and a frame through which the city is seen.
The Book is published by Small Small Editions in 2025.
The streets of Seoul are for people: they belong equally to the crowd, to traffic and noise. They are bright and colorful, with every vertical surface covered in advertising signs and luminous screens. Individuals navigate this vibrant yet overwhelming environment, where the pressure can feel immense. Yet within the crowd’s flow, one’s presence may fade, and in that invisibility, a certain freedom emerges. At the heart of every human settlement lies the idea of ‘togetherness’. Villages and cities were established not only for safety and commerce but, above all, to bring people closer, to gather, to communicate, and to connect. While density defines urban life, the close clustering of people, buildings, and infrastructure also brings challenges. In today’s cities, where industrial focus has shifted, towering skyscrapers have become new symbols of the urban landscape. Amid the crowds beneath them, architecture serves as a vital tool for economic activity and is regarded as an essential resource, much like water and air. To escape the throngs and find some relief from the chaos at ground level, Michele Foti steps into a building and takes the elevator up. He lands on the fifteenth, eighteenth, and twenty-first floors to look out the windows. What unfolds before him is a cityscape unlike anything he expected. It is a quiet, suspended moment where life appears to stand still. Each window reveals only a fragment of the vast metropolis. Nearby buildings rise taller, drawing the eye and creating a steady backdrop that invites the gaze to rest. However, beyond this, a grand and towering cluster of structures continuously emerges, revealing an ever-expanding skyline.
This incredible concentration of buildings, bizarre in their variations, appears to have emerged from a furious competition with their neighbors. The city has grown layer upon layer, blending varied purposes into a vibrant and ever-evolving creation shaped by technology and the boundless human imagination. Intricately woven and touched by human hands, this city forms a unique urban landscape. Born from challenges and change, this lively city is less the product of meticulous planning than an intriguing outcome of chance and creativity. Within this constructed environment, people live closely together, where contrasting elements harmonize uniquely, coexisting side by side. Michele Foti retreats into a suspended space, his curious gaze resting on the architectural elements that support the rhythms of life. These buildings reveal aspects of the metropolis’s delicate nature and invite reflection on our ways of inhabiting the city.
Small Small Editions
Photography Michele Foti
Editing / Design zoll.studio
Exhibition design by Small Small Space / Zoll Studio
Thanks to Mariana Siracusa and Spazio Project
