User:Waldrepeth/sandbox/Urban-Think Tank

Urban-Think Tank was an architecture firm founded in Caracas, Venezuela in 1998 and presently a chair of Architecture based in Zurich, Switzerland, at ETH Zurich.

Background
Urban-Think Tank was founded in 1998 by architects Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner in Caracas. The award-winning firm is known for its research and practice in urban design and its work addressing slums in Venezuela and worldwide. From 2007 to 2010, the partners were professors at the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and since 2010, have been teaching in the ETH Zurich Faculty of Architecture.

Projects
The Caracas Metrocable, opened in 2010, is a cable-car system that connects poor hillside neighborhoods in Caracas to the rest of the city, and to the Caracas Metro. It was proposed and designed by U-TT beginning in 2006, and exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art's "Small Scale, Big Change" show in 2010.

Gimnasio Vertical Empower Shack.

Torre David, a book collecting several years of research on the Centro Financiero Confinanzas, an unfinished high-rise tower in central Caracas that was squatted in 2007. Funded by the Schindler Group, U-TT produced a film, a book, and an exhibition documenting conditions in the 'vertical shantytown' and proposing adaptations to better the conditions within.

While at Columbia University, Brillembourg and Klumpner began S.L.U.M. Lab, a research group focused on research on informal settlements that has produced ten publications on the subject to date.

Recognition
Urban-Think Tank, along with curator Justin McGuirk and photographer Iwan Baan were awarded the Golden Lion in the 2012 Venice Biennale of Architecture—the exhibition's top prize—for their contribution to the Common Ground Exhibition, curated by David Chipperfield.

The firm has been awarded the 2011 Gold (for Latin America) and 2012 Silver Global Holcim Awards for Sustainable Construction for their project in Sao Paolo.

In 2010, Urban-Think Tank was awarded the Ralph Erskine award for social architecture by the Swedish Association of Architects.