Publications

Films

Teaching

Buildings

Exhibitions

Venezuela/Switzerland, 2013
24 min, Spanish

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.

2015
Dok.Arts Film Festival, Berlin, DE
Metropolis Kino, Hamburg, DE
Swissnex Sanfransisco, San Fransisco, USA
reSITE Festival, Prague, CZ
Focus Filmtheater, Arnhem, NL

2014
Barbican Summer Film Series, London, EN
DOXA, Toronto, CA
New Orleans Film Festival, New Orleans, USA
Belgradescapes, Belgrade SR
Social Justice Film Festival, Seattle, USA
Boka Architecture Film Festival, Kotor, ME
Sustainable Living Film Festival, Istanbul, TR
Grenchen Wohntage, Grenchen, CH
Prishtina Architecture Festival, Prishtina, KV
Milano Design Film Festival, Milan, IT

2013
International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, NL (Int’l Premiere)
Urban Eye Film Festival, Bucharest RO
Budapest Architecture Film Festival, Budapest, HU
Arquitectura Film Festival Santiago
Lichter Film Fest, Frankfurt, DE

Venice Biennale of Architecture, IT, 2012
Museum of Art and Design, NYC, 2014
Fotomuseum of Winterthur, CH, 2013
Aedes Gallery, Berlin, DE, 2013
Coalmine Gallery, CH, 2013
Torre Hofpoort, Rotterdam, NL, 2015
Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund, DE, 2013
Baden Baden Kunsthalle, DE, 2013
Trienal de Lisboa, PT, 2013

Princeton University
University of Pennsylvania
Maastricht University
Lehigh University

Torre David

Colombia/Switzerland, 2015
5 min, Spanish

A short docu-fiction about the biographer of a city’s organs, wandering through and above her urban memories. Commissioned by The Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst for the 2015 exhibition “News from nowhere: Zürich 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.

La Continuación del Mundo

The biographer of a city's organs wanders the city's streets in a reflective mood.

A U-TT Films and Gran Horizonte Media production, inspired by the work of Moon & Jeon, made in collaboration for the News from Nowhere exhibition at the Migros Museum for Gegenwartskunst.

A film by Daniel Schwartz
Executive Production: Alfredo Brillembourg & Hubert Klumpner
Performance: Angela Ospina
Voice Over: María Paula Celia
Production and Camera Assistance: Santiago Loaiza Echeverri
Production Assistance: Juan Manuel Restrepo & Frederico Lopez Arteaga
Editing Assistance: Davide Bernardis
Music: Marcel Aubert
Special Thanks: Verónica Urbi, Rafael Machado

Commissioned by The Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst for the "News from nowhere: Zürich Laboratory" exhibition
in collaboration with Moon & Jeon

Filmed in Medellin, Colombia, 2015

La continuacion del mundo Preview

Multiple Countries, 2013
Single-channel 45 min, Triple-Channel 33 min, Multiple languages

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.

Gran Horizonte

Urban-Think Tank Media at ETH Zurich presents:
"Gran Horizonte: Around the Day in 80 Worlds"

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. 

Made with the support of:

ETH Zürich: www.u-tt.arch.ethz.ch
The Georg und Bertha Schwyzer-Winiker Stiftung
Habitat Norway: www.habitat-norge.org

Directed by Daniel Schwartz with Martin Andersson
Music by Juana Molina

Gran Horizonte: Around the Day in 80 Worlds

Made in partnership with The Holcim Foundation and ETH Zürich, this short film places Mumbai as the backdrop for a new way of viewing and engaging informal settlements. Featuring interviews with experts and practitioners like Alejandro Araveña, David Chipperfield, Moshen Mostafavi, Aaron Sorkin, and Geeta Mehta among others, the documentary provides insights into a city that is struggling with rapid growth. Ultimately, cities like Mumbai provoke urgent questions about the role of architects and planners in humane urban development.

Mumbai: Maximum City Under Pressure

India/Switzerland, 2014
15 min, English

Made in partnership with The Holcim Foundation and ETH Zürich, this short film places Mumbai as the backdrop for a new way of viewing and engaging informal settlements. Featuring interviews with experts and practitioners like Alejandro Araveña, David Chipperfield, Moshen Mostafavi, Aaron Sorkin, and Geeta Mehta among others, the documentary provides insights into a city that is struggling with rapid growth. Ultimately, cities like Mumbai provoke urgent questions about the role of architects and planners in humane urban development.

Mumbai: Maximum City Under Pressure Trailer

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 and decision-makers are heard as we explore the corridors of Robin Hood – their voices, like dissonant radio waves, take turns in expounding the values of the estate, while also arguing about its reputation, significance, and future. Meanwhile, intimate portraits of residents express the emotional, humorous, and complex story of the project. Mixing documentary and fiction storytelling, we piece the history of the Robin Hood Gardens estate gradually, from its initial transformation of industrial land into an idyllic, leafy neighbourhood, to its eventual re-configuration of street life into a vertical context, before turning to the contemporary reality.

Less than 50 years later, London is a very different place. The incessantly growing city, powered by financial capital, dissolves the previous generation’s social housing projects, re-development by re-development. An emerging steel-and-glass skyline defines the new norms of housing, rendering notions of social welfare more akin to history rather than to embodied policy. The question arises: where has Robin Hood gone?

The Disappearance of Robin Hood

Produced by Urban-Think Tank in 2016, this film represents, through the words of some of the people closest to it, the state of the Historical Museum after twenty years of disinvestment. Deconstructed songs of resistance from the Yugoslav partizan era link the museum’s architecture to the time of the institution’s birth, as the voices of Sarajevans suggest a new future for the building.

The People’s Museum

Produced by Urban-Think Tank in 2016, this film represents, through the words of some of the people closest to it, the state of the Historical Museum after twenty years of disinvestment. Deconstructed songs of resistance from the Yugoslav partizan era link the museum’s architecture to the time of the institution’s birth, as the voices of Sarajevans suggest a new future for the building.

Directed by Michael Waldrep and Daniel Schwartz
Concept by Alfredo Brillembourg & Hubert Klumpner

Camera and Post-Production - michael waldrep
Sound Recording - daniel schwartz

Featuring Amar Karapuš, Elma Hashimbegović, Hana Čolić, and Jim Marshall

Music: Za Ovčara I Kablara and Bilećanka as sung by Miroslav Čangalović

The People's Museum

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.

MK’s Upstairs Shack

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. More on the project can be learned at www.empowershack.com

This video also appears in the exhibition, "Empower Shack" currently showing at the Eva Presenhuber Gallery in Zürich. More information on the exhibition can be found at the gallery website, http://bit.ly/1lCWohj

Produced by U-TT Films and ETH Zürich
Concept by Alfredo Brillembourg & Hubert Klumpner
Directed, Filmed and Edited by Daniel Schwartz
Production Assistance: Scott Lloyd and Siya Matiki

This video was made in partnership with the Cape Town-based NGO, Ikhayalami (www.ikhayalami.org) and Swisspearl (www.swisspearl.com)