SFI8 SPEAKERS

Panel IV: design . power

Panelists
Teddy Cruz, Estudio Teddy Cruz (San Diego, CA)
Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner, Urban Think Tank (Caracas, Venezuela)

Moderator
Rahul Mehrotra, Associate Professor, School of Architecture + Planning, MIT

Urban Think Tank is a multi-disciplinary design practice dedicated to high-level research and design on a variety of subjects, concerned with contemporary architecture, urbanism. The philosophy of the UTT is to deliver innovative yet practical solutions through the combined skills of architects, civil engineers, environmental planners, landscape architects, and communication specialists. UTT is clearly aligned with a pro-market approach to the economy, but with an emphasis on social welfare, social equity and environmental sensibility. UTT a has pledged 10% of its revenue to a non-profit NGO "Caracas Think Tank" established in 1993, to support urban cultural research. We award grants to domestic and international urban initiatives that make a difference for the Caracas urban culture.
 
In each project, the design team explores and understands issues generated by the client’s demands. UTT was founded in 1993 by Alfredo Brillembourg and, in 1998, Hubert Klumpner joined as principal.The office consists of 10 permanent staff members working out of Caracas, Venezuela. In 2003, UTT expanded its business activities with the addition of a New York branch. Both principals have been actively involved in lecturing and teaching at Universities in the US and Latin America. With our international staff, the UTT succeeds in creating an environment that is academic, professional and creative. UTT approaches each project individually, and thus our designs reflect a sensibility to economic efficiency, social and cultural benefits. Presently, UTT is in the process of expanding its services to other countries in Latin America.

Teddy Cruz’ Teddy Cruz is a Guatemalan-born architect, whose work dwells at the border between San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico, where he has been developing a practice and pedagogy that emerge out of the particularities of this cross cultural territory. His research has focused on the trans border urban dynamics between these two cities, where urbanities of immigration and surveillance, density and sprawl, wealth and poverty, the formal and informal collide and overlap daily. Teddy Cruz's practice exposes local zones of conflict as instrument to redefine the meaning of architectural intervention in the global contemporary city. He has been recognized internationally in collaboration with community-based nonprofit organizations such as Casa Familiar for their research and work on housing and its relationship to alternative land use policies, modes of sociability and economic processes.

He obtained a Masters in Design Studies from Harvard University and the Rome Prize in Architecture from the American Academy in Rome. His work has been exhibited internationally, including "Archilab" in Orleans, France, the Architectural Biennials of Rotterdam and Lisbon and most recently at the San Francisco Art Institute and the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art. In 2004-05 he was the first recipient of the James Stirling Memorial Lecture On The City Prize, by the Canadian Center of Architecture and the London School of Economics. He is currently an associate professor in public culture and urbanism in the Visual Arts Department at UCSD in San Diego and is working in association with the PARC foundation in NY City to develop affordable housing and public infrastructure for communities in need, nationally and internationally.

Rahul Mehrotra founded the firm Rahul Mehrotra Associates (RMA), in August 1990 and has since served as its principal. He is actively involved with Urban Conservation projects in the city of Bombay and has served from 1992 to 1999 on the Advisory Committee to the Municipal Commissioner on the Conservation of Heritage Buildings and artifacts in the city. He has also authored a number of books on Bombay and has written extensively on architecture, urban design and planning in India.

Since 1996 Mehrotra has been on the Board of Governors of the Metropolitan Regional Development Authority's Heritage Society, which administers grants as well as supports and facilitates conservation projects in Mumbai. From 1994, Mehrotra has been the Executive Director of the Urban Design Research Institute in Bombay which promotes research on the city with the aim of influencing urban design and planning policy. He has been actively involved in the creation, maintenance and preservation of Bombay's Public Spaces with numerous Citizens Associates, as well as official Government Working Groups and Committees. Prior to arriving at MIT, Mehrotra has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, The National University of Singapore, and at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor.