Urban-Think Tank (U-TT) is an interdisciplinary design practice dedicated to high-level research and design on a variety of subjects, concerned with contemporary architecture and urbanism. The philosophy of U-TT is to deliver innovative yet practical solutions through the combined skills of architects, civil engineers, environmental planners, landscape architects, and communication specialists. Urban Think Tank Film Marathon is a movie night with movies produced by design agency Urban Think Tank.
The Disappearance of Robin Hood (~25 mins)
London, 1972 the city is growing, and with it the need to house working populations. Post-war values of social welfare make experimenting with new forms of housing possible, ushering in an era of modernist, utopian projects. Among the most daring and innovative, Peter and Alison Smithson’s Robin Hood Gardens estate. The echoes of experts
Double Story Shacks (~26 mins)
Mizukisi Kewana, also known as MK, lives in the township of Khayalitsha on the Southern periphery of Cape Town, South Africa. He is a self-employed handyman, living alone in a double-story shack that he built himself. ‘Upstairs Shacks’ as they are referred to by many residents of Khayalitsha, are rare. Most people occupy single-story structures built out of sub-standard materials. The government has also promised to supply quality housing for all citizens, but their brick homes are expensive, small, and slow to build. Currently they face a 2.5 million housing backlog, a number that is only growing. There is much to learn from the few residents like MK who chose to incrementally build and experiment with different forms and building processes. This profile is part of a series of on-site interviews and architectural investigations into upstairs shacks. The series was made as part of U-TT/ETH Zurich’s Empower Shack project, an interdisciplinary research and design project that hopes to develop a new system of housing in the informal settlements of South Africa. Operating from the traditional base of architecture and urban design, we hope to develop a system that allows residents, the private sector and government authorities to address the country’s 2.5 million backlog of adequate housing.
Gran Horizonte (~45 mins)
Compiled with material collected by U-TT Films over the course of three years, this documentary portrays the reality of urban informality around the world, structured in a dream-like dérive of a single day. Asking questions rather than presenting answers, ‘Gran Horizonte’ aims to broaden the perspective of viewers about both the world they live within and the world they could help create.
La Continuacion Del Mundo (~5 mins)
A short docu-fiction about the biographer of a city’s organs, wandering through and above her urban memories. Commissioned by The Migros Museum fur Gegenwartskunst for the 2015 exhibition ‘News from nowhere: Zurich Laboratory’, the film is a response to South Korean artist’s Moon & Jeon’s video projects. Themes such as ecological collapse, technological innovation, and perceptions of the past and future, are refracted through a contemporary resident of Medellin, Colombia.
Torre David (~21 mins)
Torre David, a 45-story office tower in Caracas, was almost complete when it was abandoned following the death of its developer and a national banking crisis that crippled the Venezuelan economy in 1994. Neglected for over a decade, in 2007 it became the improvised home for a community of over 800 families living in an extra-legal and tenuous occupation that many called a vertical slum. This short documentary reveals what life was like for residents several years prior to the government’s eviction in 2014. Filmed as part of larger project by the interdisciplinary design team, Urban-Think Tank, the movie was part of a larger research and design project that resulted in a book and numerous exhibitions, including the Golden-Lion-winning exhibition at the 2012 Venice Biennale of Architecture.
In 1998, Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner founded U-TT in Caracas, Venezuela. Since 2007, Brillembourg and Klumpner have taught at Columbia University, where they founded the Sustainable Living Urban Model Laboratory (S.L.U.M. Lab), and since July 2010, they hold the chair for Architecture and Urban Design at the Swiss Institute of Technology, ETH in Zurich. Their work concerns both theoretical and practical applications within architecture and urban planning. Working in global contexts by creating bridges between first world industry and third world, informal urban areas, they focus on the education and development of a new generation of professionals, who will transform cities in the 21st century. They have been awarded the 2010 Ralph Erskine Award, the 2011 Holcim Gold Award for Latin America, the 2012 Holcim Global Silver Award for innovative contributions to ecological and social design practices, and the 2012 Venice Biennale of Architecture Golden Lion.
