Urban-Think Tank was selected as one of five architectural offices to develop a vision for the future of mobility in cities. The team focused on Säo Paulo, looking critically at existing infrastructure and transportation patterns in order to imagine future products and processes.
Since the 1930s, Brazilian government investment has focused on the growth of extensive automobile infrastructure, a trend that has diminished investment in alternative modes of mass transit, and resulted in current issues of congestion and infrastructure limitations. This is a key component of the larger, asymmetrical urbanization process. Population density in parts of the central region of the city have diminished, while the urbanization of peripheral areas, especially in the sprawling gated communities and favelas, has exploded. As a consequence, the majority of people within São Paulo face both social and territorial immobility. Innovative new modes and pathways of notion are needed to make São Paulo an accessible and inclusive city for all of its inhabitants.
The resulting proposal, titled, “Urban Parangolé” liberates spaces of the contemporary city, engaging a fully three-dimensional field of mobility. Through the strata of different elevations and temporal flux, city planners introduce new pathways and services that allow São Paulo to support a swider variety of programs and typologies. Technology and democratic planning processes increase accessibility and self-determined public space. Urban Parangolé ultimately proposes the creation of networked villages that stitch together a fragmented city at a human scale.
Selected Press
<a href="https://www.designboom.com/architecture/urban-think-tank-urban-parangole-the-mobile-village-2/">“Urban Parangolé the Mobile Village,” DesignBoom, 2012</a>
<a href="http://audi-urban-future-initiative.com/blog/urbanthink-tank">“Urban-Think Tank’s Research on São Paulo,” Audi Urban Future, 2012</a>
<a href="http://audi-urban-future-initiative.com/blog/urbanthink-tank">“The Audi Urban Future Award 2012,” Domus, 2012</a>
<a href="https://www.bauwelt.de/dl/733879/bw_2012_45_0008-0013.pdf">“Audi Urban Future Award,” Bauwelt, 2012</a>

Audi Urban Future Award

Urban Parangolé

Exhibitions

The Urban Groundworks contribution to the City Desired exhibition at Cape Town City Hall presents the first stage in the community-driven urban upgrade process currently taking place in the BT-Section of Khayelitsha. Rooted firmly in this bottom-up process of urban transformation, the focus lies on site analysis, mapping, and the tools and acts of negotiation in reshaping the urban environment. The aim is to reveal the significance of place making through direct stakeholder participation. In addition, the exhibition catalogue offers a report on a long-term, integrated research program run by U-TT, in collaboration with Cape Town-based NGO, Ikhayalami, and community members of BT-Section.
The activities displayed in Urban Groundworks form part of the broader Empower Shack project led by Urban-Think Tank and collaborating partners. What began as a design and build workshop that aimed at developing an affordable and sustainable shack prototype for Khayelitsha, has evolved into a more ambitious project to devise and implement design, methodological and analytical innovations for rapid and incremental shack upgrading on an urban scale, supported by community-driven spatial planning and multifaceted livelihoods programming.

Cape Town City Hall

Urban Groundworks

November 2015 – FEBRUARY 2016: <a href="https://www.architekturmuseum.de/ausstellungen/si-no-architecture-urban-think-tank/">Architekturmuseum der TU Munich</a>
October 2015: ETH Zürich, Hauptgebäude Säulenhalle
Urban-Think Tank‘s first retrospective exhibition aims to provoke questions about how design can create better cities. The exhibition is comprised of a modular, off-the-shelf, pipe structure, layered fabric panels, videos, and models.  It shows an overview of U-TT’s research methods, proposals, and built projects from the past two decades. The presented work is premised on an urgent curiosity. Faced with crises of inequality, resource scarcity, and ecological volatility, U-TT argues that designers cannot remain passive. They must ask difficult questions. They must ask themselves and the world at large whether their work can make a meaningful difference. Yes or no?
A companion catalogue in the format of U-TT’s semi-regular publication, SLUM Lab Magazine, was released at the exhibition’s premiere in Zürich. As the tenth issue of SLUM Lab, it is a curated anthology of Urban‑Think Tank’s published work dating back to 2002, including essays, articles, book extracts, excerpts from out-of-print back issues, archival and documentary photo essays, as well as new contributions from Andres Lepik and Justin McGuirk.
Selected Press Coverage
<a href="https://www.damnmagazine.net/2016/01/14/learning-from-caracas/">“Learning from Caracas,” DAMn Magazine, 2016</a>
<a href="https://www.designboom.com/architecture/si-no-the-architecture-of-urban-think-tank-exhibition-10-20-2015/">“Si/No Exhibition” DesignBoom, 2015</a>
<a href="https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/wissen/technik/caracas-ist-ueberall/story/13497226">“Zwei unkonventionelle ETH-Professoren,” Tages Anzeiger, 2015</a>

Si/No: The Architecture of Urban-Think Tank

U-TT’s Vertical Gym prototype was featured as one of numerous global design projects in the show, <a href="https://www.designother90.org/">Design with the Other 90%: CITIES</a> organized by the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. The Vertical Gym was selected as an example of how architecture can address complex issues arising from the unprecedented growth of informal settlements in emerging and developing economies. By building upward in dense environments, the Vertical Gym provides provides under-served communities with additional recreation space. The exhibition was hosted in the United Nations headquarters, offering an ideal setting to examine these complex issues and connect with powerful and influential stakeholders.

Location	Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, UN Headquarters in New York
Year	2011
Curator	Cynthia E. Smith