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Urban-Think Tank (U-TT) ist eine interdisziplinäre Designagentur, die aus der politisch instabilen Lage Caracas’ zu Zeiten der Chávez-Ära hervorging und seit gut 20 Jahren Projekte in Lateinamerika, Europa und Afrika verwirklicht. Durch seine vielschichtige Arbeit nahm das Unternehmen Ende der 1990er-Jahre die Vorreiterrolle einer sozialen Wende in der Architektur ein; mit stadtplanerischen Interventionen, die den sozialen Zusammenhalt in den Metropolen auf der südlichen Halbkugel und in den wachsenden Städten Europas stärkten. Zudem produzierte U-TT zahlreiche Medienprojekte, die Film, Theater, Ausstellungen und Druckarbeiten für sich nutzen, um neue diskursive Räume zu schaffen und die Frage aufzuwerfen, wie und für wen unsere Städte entwickelt sind. Die wohl bekannteste Arbeit entstand über das Torre-de-David-Hochhaus, die auf der Architekturbiennale von Venedig 2012 mit dem Goldenen Löwen ausgezeichnet wurde. Dieses Buch blickt jedoch nicht nur zurück, sondern auch nach vorn, ersinnt neue Räume für eine hyper-urbanisierte Welt und ermöglicht Einblicke in informelle Siedlungen, räumliche Spielflächen und künstlerische Interventionen im öffentlichen Raum.
Practical advice for policy institutes and consulting agencies.
Torre David, a 45-story skyscraper in Caracas, has remained uncompleted since the Venezuelan economy collapsed in 1994. Today, it is the improvised home to more than 750 families living in an extra-legal and tenuous squat, that some have called a "vertical slum." Urban-Think Tank, the authors of TORRE DAVID: INFORMAL VERTICAL COMMUNITIES, spent a year studying the physical and social organization of this ruin-become home. Richly illustrated with photographs by Iwan Baan, the book documents the residents' occupation of the tower and how, in the absence of formal infrastructure, they organize themselves to provide for daily needs, with a hair salon, a gym, grocery shops, and more. The authors of this thought-provoking work investigate informal vertical communities and the architecture that supports them and issue a call for action: to see in informal settlements a potential for innovation and experimentation, with the goal of putting design in service to a more equitable and sustainable future. ILLUSTRATIONS: 300
Parangolé ist ein jährlich erscheinendes, unabhängiges Magazin, das Ideen zu Urbanisierung, Design und Architektur erforscht und einen globalen Dialog über Themen wie Mobilität, Migration, Fluidität und Vielfältigkeit initiiert. Das Magazin beschäftigt sich mit der kulturellen, sozialen und politischen Bedeutung dessen, was es bedeutet, in der Stadt zu leben. Der Titel ist eine Hommage an das Werk des brasilianischen Künstlers Hélio Oiticica und erweitert dessen zentralen Grundsatz »Leben ist Bewegung« vom Körper auf die Stadt. Die erste Ausgabe von Parangolé mit dem Titel Motherland befasst sich mit dem Lebensraum derjenigen, die aufgrund von wirtschaftlicher Not, Konflikten und Gewalt in prekären und unbeständigen Verhältnissen leben. Menschen, die auf der Flucht – also »in Bewegung« – sind, stehen vor großen Herausforderungen und sind besonders verwundbar. Diese Tatsachen müssen bei der Stadtplanung entsprechend berücksichtigt werden. In Motherland werden Theorie und Praxis zusammengebracht, um über diese Fragen und ihre Lösungen nachzudenken.
After more than a century of heroic urban visions, urban dwellers today live in suburban subdivisions, gated communities, edge cities, apartment towers, and slums. The contemporary cities we know are more often the embodiment of unexpected outcomes and unintended consequences rather than visionary planning. As an alternative approach for rethinking and remaking today’s cities and regions, this book explores the intersections of critical inquiry and immediate, substantive actions. The contributions inside recognize the rich complexities of the present city not as barriers or obstacles but as grounds for uncovering opportunity and unleashing potential. Now Urbanism asserts that the future city is already here. It views city making as grounded in the imperfect, messy, yet rich reality of the existing city and the everyday purposeful agency of its dwellers. Through a framework of situating, grounding, performing, distributing, instigating, and enduring, these contributions written by a multidisciplinary group of practitioners and scholars illustrate specificity, context, agency, and networks of actors and actions in the re-making of the contemporary city.
Published to accompany the exhibition held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 28 Sept. 2010-3 Jan. 2011.
This richly illustrated book presents the exhibits and curatorial visions of the 2015 Shenzhen Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism (UABB), organized around the theme, Re-Living the City. It highlights the contributions of dozens of international architects, designers and artists, and offers 12 probing, original essays. The projects and essays of UABB 2015, Re-Living the City, criticize the status quo of architecture and urbanism, but they also resist the false dream of designing a perfect city from scratch. Instead, they portray the city as the incremental product of its inhabitants and designers, who provisionally make and remake its fabric through various means at their disposal. Urbaniz...
Has the Internet killed our main streets? Have our town and city centers become obsolete? This book looks beyond the empty commercial buildings and "shop local" campaigns to focus on the real issues: how the relationship between people and places is changing; how business is done and who benefits; and how the use and ownership of land affects us all. Written in an engaging and accessible style and incorporating numerous original interviews, How to Save Our Town Centres sets out a comprehensive and coherent agenda for long-term, citizen-led change. It will be vital reading for policy makers and researchers alike, and anyone interested in planning, architecture and the built environment, economic development, and community participation.
A revealing look at the rise of these influential institutions, and the effect they’ve had on the United States. Think tanks have become fixtures of American politics, supplying advice to presidents and policy makers, expert testimony on Capitol Hill, and convenient facts and figures to journalists and media specialists. But what are think tanks? Who funds them? What kind of research do they produce? Where does their authority come from? And how influential have they become? In Think Tanks in America, Thomas Medvetz argues that the unsettling ambiguity of the think tank is less an accidental feature of its existence than the very key to its impact. By combining elements of more established...
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