Different actors hold different visions for the future of higher education. Some imagine more global campuses, others call for greater efficiency through technology, while still others push for inclusion, accessibility, and democratization. These visions often remain abstract, circulating in policy documents, reform plans, and statements, but rarely take shape in a way we can see or feel. What would a truly international university look like? What would happen if algorithmic systems determined every aspect of campus life? In an era where institutional futures are increasingly shaped by narrative competition, visualizing these futures becomes crucial. 

As Max Mundhenke, a German AI consultant, put it: “Using image generation is an attempt to reduce complexity, to offer a new, visual approach to politics, and to stimulate discussion about politics and the use of AI.” Mundhenke has worked on translating German party manifestos into AI-generated cityscapes. The result is highly visual, yet disturbingly simplified. Each rendering reflects a clear narrative, but also shows how these narratives became unnaturally seamless when severed from reality.

SNU, too, is increasingly shaped by narratives. From administrative reform to new digital platforms, actors are proposing, contesting, or opposing visions for how the university should change. What happens when we attempt to visualize a few of these visions? 

Institutional Mythos: The Emblem as a Fixed Vision

The university’s logo is a good place to start. In the middle, you see a pen, a torch, an open book, and the school gate symbol, all wrapped in a laurel wreath. The gate symbol is shaped like the Korean character ‘샤’, which combines the consonants ㄱ, ㅅ, and ㄷ—standing for 국립 (National), 서울 (Seoul), and 대학교 (University)—and resembles a key, symbolizing the “key to truth.” Each part holds meaning: the laurel stands for academic honor, and the pen and torch show SNU’s dedication to lighting the way through knowledge. Our school’s motto Veritas Lux Mea, meaning “Truth is my light,” is written across the open book. It is an image of learning, wisdom, and dignity.

A grand gate, students studying beneath a light shining down on them. Not too far from reality, but Gwanaksan is gone, and so are the daily struggles that make campus life real.

Symbols like this don’t just show what a school values—they also set boundaries. They suggest that the university upholds one clear truth and path. When this emblem is turned into AI-generated images, the pictures rendered are of grand gates, marble pillars, students with books, and a light shining from above. These images feel more like a polished, official ideal than the real, sometimes messy life of the campus. A vision that’s honorable but possibly too simple.

About Imported Structures: Whose System Is It Anyway?

Back to its beginnings. SNU was founded in 1946 by merging Kyungsung Imperial University with ten public colleges under the U.S. Military Government. Although the aim was to create a new national university that would serve an independent Korea, early reforms were limited, and much of the colonial structure from Japanese occupation remained intact. After the Korean War, the American-led “Minnesota Project” restructured SNU’s system through the SNU Centralization Plan, introducing a thoroughly planned, modular, and centralized American-style campus model.

Then in 1958, SNU architecture professor Yoon Chang-sup proposed a U.S.-inspired campus design based on postwar urban planning. Though initially rejected, his ideas shaped the final 1971 plan by the American firm DPUA. The result was a fused space, Korean in location, but American in logic. This marked a shift in Korean higher education: outdoor campus space became central. It became part of the university’s identity, shaping movement, behavior, and its students beyond lecture halls.

AI turned this narrative into a traditional-style Korean campus, free from foreign influences. Paths connect the various departments and the people studying within them. At the main gate, now designed in a different style, the phrase Veritas Lux Mea is inscribed, not in Latin, but in Korean.

Academically, SNU’s departments, evaluation methods, and degrees reflect this imported legacy, mixing American systems with Korean traditions. This creates tension: can SNU fully claim a Korean identity when its core structures are borrowed? What would the university look like if it broke away from these influences? One possible answer might be a university space shaped more by Korean cultural values, less divided by rigid departmental structures and more oriented toward shared spaces, collective learning, and cross-disciplinary exchange.

Wayfinding and Who Gets Lost

The architectural structure also extends to how people navigate the campus. Orientation is a part of the university’s narrative, one often designed not around lived experience, but around abstract structures. For international students, especially, this can mean entering a space that feels legible on paper but confusing in navigation. Inspired by this, Carlos Silva’s (2014) on “Wayfinding Design for Seoul National University Gwanak Campus” proposed transforming the campus map with a layered numbering system and multiple types of signboards (main, zone, college), reinforced by clearly designed street routes and aligned building panels. This would improve wayfinding speed by over 22%. 

A split campus: one side, rigid, grand, and the other, fragmented, multilingual, and open. Students from both halves meet in the center, but are a bit unsure whether to pass or to talk.

Silva also suggested harmonizing nature and design: extending the Jahayeon Pond along main pedestrian routes to guide visitors visually and auditorily; planting recognizable pine groves and willow trees; and standardizing pathway widths and materials to create cohesive routes. These ideas should not only aid navigation but create a campus environment where everyone can find their way, literally and figuratively.

Techno-Futures: Optimization as Destiny?

Building on this vision of accessibility, SNU’s Office of Information Systems & Technology sees a smart campus powered by AI services and seamless platforms. Projects like SNU Genie personalize academic support using student data, while private 5G upgrades connectivity. Platforms for interdisciplinary research, AI plagiarism detection, and big data tracking aim to enhance academic integrity and innovation. When visualized by AI itself, these ideas produce pretty sleek images: drones, touchscreen desks, and VR headsets. But do such digital visions risk reducing the university experience to a tech-driven environment? How can efficiency coexist with the dynamic, lived realities of campus life?

A sleek smart campus: glass buildings with LED strips, paths lighting up with each step, and drones gliding overhead. The data tower flashes “Veritas Lux Mea.” But even with all the lights and technology, there are still a few trees that stand their ground.

So why use AI in the first place?

Visualizing these narratives with AI is not to predict the future, but to simulate what happens when one narrative dominates. Each image is powerful, but also too sterile. AI doesn’t render friction, only amplifies dreams, filling gaps with familiar tropes, including Western architecture, modernism, and digital utopianism. This isn’t just about technology. It’s about how narratives unconsciously reproduce dominant ideas under the guise of objectivity or progress.

AI, in the way it generates images by combining and reinforcing existing data, becomes a symbol of tradition and repetition, the recycling of what already exists rather than true innovation. It shows how institutional decisions can unintentionally reinforce old hierarchies and entrenched patterns. When one narrative dominates, the resulting visual uniformity serves as a warning against universities adopting corporate or purely efficiency-driven models.

SNU is not a brand or software product, but a living social space that thrives on disagreement and experimentation. The emblem declares, “Truth is my light,” but truth is not a fixed blueprint. It is a process. And the light of that torch shines brightest not when it is held by a single actor, be it a planner, a state body, or an algorithm, but when it’s passed around and shared collectively.

The images generated are not visions. They are provocations intended to challenge assumptions and reveal how easily futures can seem fixed when they’re still open to change and negotiation. SNU’s future should not be rendered by AI, nor sealed in strategic brochures. It should be shaped by the students who protest, the professors who question, the designers who rethink space, and the outsiders who imagine something different. Truth may be our light, but it only shines when carried by many.