About Urbanthinktank_next (Uttnext)
uttnext re-imagines urbanization through architecture, landscape architecture, planning, and urbanism by designing and providing access to analog and digital tools, methods, and prototypical projects augmenting the quality of life for all people in existing and new cities - against the backdrop of an interwoven world-primarily from southern perspectives.
Urban-Think Tank emerged from a garage project founded by Hubert Klumpner and Alfredo Brillembourg in Venezuela, as Caracas-Think Tank in 1998, and has been active ever since in architecture urban planning, design, and art. Other project offices existed in several locations until the opening of a second studio in 2011 in Zurich (CH). In 2019 the partnership with Alfredo Brillembourg came to an end.Consequently, Hubert Klumpner started a new studio as Design Principal and CEO with a generational, gender, and geographical shift, focusing on socio-ecological design for Climate_Care, re-founded as Urbanthinktank_next (uttnext) in Zurich (CH). Soon later, they established another office, moving operations from Caracas (VE) to Medellin (COL), and developed a network of project partners and new associates from the Balkans and South Africa.
Since 2020, Michael Walczak co-directs uttnext projects in Vienna (A) and Sarajevo (BiH), experimenting during the pandemic with the mobile studio, think tank-station. Alejandro Restrepo-Montoya and Diego Ceresuela-Wiesmann are co-directing the office in Medellin (COL). Our theoretical framework for Radical Care and Climate Action is on display at the Vienna Biennale for Change 2021 in the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) main exhibition. Uttnext is uniting a growing network of collaborators and local partnerships developing and constructing original prototypical projects. Our theoretical framework of Radical Care and Climate Action is a critic against the technology-reliant smart-city movement and presented in the MAK main exhibition. The Climate-Care exhibition builds theory and proposes concrete alternatives for social and environmental justice by agency and design.