Thursday, July 24
(in speaking order)
Nicolaus Heiss (Darmstadt)
Nicolaus Heiss acts as a coordinator of Mathildenhöhe since 2008. He studied architecture at the Technical University of Darmstadt. Between 1971-81 he was working in architectural practices and as a freelance archi- tect, his work including design and execution of several residences in Munich, Darmstadt and the surround- ing area, rehabilitation of historic buildings, development plans, land use plans and preparatory studies for redevelopment areas and urban planning for the city of Darmstadt. During the years 1981-2010 he was the senior conservator of the city of Darmstadt.
Astrid Schmeing (Darmstadt)
Astrid Schmeing is the architecture professor of history of urban development, urban planning and design in Hochschule Darmstadt since 2009. 1999-2005 she was the Research Associate at the Department of Urban Planning and Design at the University of Karlsruhe. Next to that she taught at the Architectural Association, and the University of Applied Sciences Münster. 2002-2005 and participated in the research group ‘Zwischenstadt elsewhere’ of the ‘Ladenburg Collegium’. At present she works on a research-project on future developments of 1950th settlements, funded by the Federal State of Hessen. Before her academic career, she was working with ‘UN Studio’ in Amsterdam and ‘office on Lützowplatz’ in Berlin after studies at Mün- ster School of Architecture, The Ohio State University (Fulbright scholarship) and the Architectural Association.
Martin Kaltwasser (Berlin)
Martin Kaltwasser studied art and architecture. He works in the areas of installation, object, design, perfor- mance, architecture, theory and urban studies. His solo artworks and those artworks which he produces in collaboration with the artist Folke Köbberling, are exhibited worldwide. He works usually site specific and combines research with a spatial, object-like, architectural implementation. Many of his projects are partici- patory, with the participation of volunteers concerned, «marginalized groups», children and adolescents. For these projects, he uses the «city as a resource», that means, reclaimed waste materials in urban areas.
» www.koebberlingkaltwasser.de
Ana Méndez de Andés (Madrid)
Ana Méndez de Andés is an architect and urban planner who has been working and teaching landscape and urban design in Amsterdam, London, Madrid and Shanghai. Her main field of interest is the question of urban commons and the reappropriation of public space. Since 2005 she is part of the Observatorio Metropolitano, a militant research group looking into urban transformations taking place in Madrid, brought on by the austerity, gentrification, speculation and displacement processes. Ana collaborates with the publishing house Traficantes de Sueños and the Fundación de los Comunes network, and has also been involved in different projects regarding collaborative mapping, urban commons and the conditions of production of public space such as Cartac, areaciega, and urbanaccion.
» www.observatoriometropolitano.org
Mauricio Corbalan (Buenos Aires)
Based in Buenos Aires, m7red is an urban resources network with archives, laboratories and consulting offices. M7red was founded by Mauricio Corbalan and Pio Torroja in 2005. Since then, they have been working with a wide range of experts and non-experts, analysing, discussing, researching and making proposals on the most pressing political and urban topics. We are working on the boundaries between an NGO, a research group, urban consulting and a strategic forum.
Bernd Kniess (Hamburg)
Bernd Kniess, is architect Professor of Urban Design HafenCity University Hamburg and the Dean of the Master Programme Urban Design. He is interested in a ‘diagrammatic’ of the contemporary city from an interdisciplinary perspective and concerned with the description of a relational understanding of planning and its conversion into a critical practice as method. With Michael Koch and Christopher Dell he initiated the teach- ing and research project ‘University of the Neighbourhoods’ (UdN) in 2008. He is a member of the research initiative ‘Low-Budget-Urbanity’ and since 2009 of the North Rhine Westphalian Academy of the Arts and Sciences.
Raoul Bunschoten (Berlin)
Raoul Bunschoten is Professor of Sustainable Urban Planning and Urban Design at the TU Berlin. He is founder and director of CHORA, an architectural design and urban planning group. He is a specialist in Smart City planning and is involved in a range of Smart City and low carbon developments in China, both with academic and central government partners, as well as with local authorities. He is a member of the Climate KIC Sustainability City Platform, an EU initiative, and is co-founder of an Urban Lab for Smart City research at the TU Berlin. Special research areas at the TU are the creation of the BrainBox, an interactive urban performance space for the study of complex dynamics in urbanism, especially Smart City development, and the Urban Gallery, an interactive planning support tool for Intelligent City Systems.
Urs Kumberger, Marius Gantert, Teleinternetcafé (Berlin)
Teleinternetcafé was founded in 2011 by Manfred Eccli, Marius Gantert, Andreas Krauth, Urs Kumberger and Verena Schmidt. It specializes in the field of architecture and urbanism. The investigation of situational qualities acts as the starting point of the search for new and open forms of city. Urs Kumberger (*1983, Straubing). Lives and works in Berlin besides working as a research assistant at the Leibniz University of Hanover. Marius Gantert (*1984, Heidelberg) lives and works in Stuttgart, Karlsruhe and sometimes Berlin. He is a research assistant and a tutor at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, besides being member of Teleinternetcafe.
Teleinternetcafé’s ongoing work includes the ‘Kreativquartier München’, which is planned to become a mixed-use neighbourhood with 900 apartments, creative and cultural programs, university buildings and offices. The 20-acre area has been formerly used for military and industrial purposes. The current rare informal qualities and temporary uses of existing buildings are confronted with an enormous development pressure on innercity locations. The challenge is to meet the huge demand for new apartments without losing the specific character of the site.
Markus Bader, raumlaborberlin (Berlin)
Markus Bader is co-founder of Raumlabor Berlin, focused on urban strategies and procedural urban development, as well as curatorial and spatial installation work on the intersections of art and the urban. He holds degrees in architecture from the Technical University of Berlin, the Berlin University of the Arts, and the Bartlett School of Architecture in London. Bader’s key projects have included creating concepts for activating Tempelhof Airport in Berlin (2007-2009); co-authoring concepts for the international building exhibition Berlin 2020 ‘City Capital – Spacious City, Instant City’ (2010-2011); and artistic direction of ‘The KNOT’ an experiment on collaborative art in public urban spaces in Berlin, Warsaw, and Bucharest (2010). Previously, Markus has acted as a guest professor at Peter Behrens School of Architecture, Düsseldorf; guest professor at Academy of Applied Arts (VSUP) Prague; and assistant professor at Brandenburgische Technische Universität Cottbus.
Dennis Crompton, Archigram (London)
Dennis Crompton, an architect, curator, inventor, book designer, and founder of the Archigram Archives, is conspicuously in charge of all the technical matters that form part of Archigram’s output. He is an enthusiast of gadgets, machines, techniques, and systems who relishes every opportunity to make a bigger and bet- ter and more ‘bang-in-the-night’ apparatus. Together with Ron Herron, Crompton was responsible for the assembly and design of the major exhibition, ‘Archigram: Experimental Architecture 1961-74′ which opened in Vienna in 1994 and continues to travel the world. Crompton has lectured widely and taught architecture and urban design at leading international schools including the Architectural Association, The Bartlett (UCL), Cooper Union, and Washington University in St. Louis. The Royal Institute of British Architects awarded Ar- chigram the Royal Gold Medal for architecture in 2002.
» www.archigram.westminister.ac.uk
Collectif Etc, (Strassburg)
collectif etc is a group of young architects and graphic designers that work on the issue of civil society‘s autonomy in the transformation of their living environment. They think that everyone is able to be active in the making of the city. However, building and occupying space is a political matter and deals with power that some groups in society don‘t have or don‘t know they have. Thus, physical space transformation is a tool collectif etc use and share to experiment and accompany self-managed urban situations.
