Interview with Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner

What does social design mean to you?
Social design is fundamental in the approaches and practices of Urban Think Tank (U-TT). Social design proposes that architects eschew their conventional role in traditional hierarchies and instead serve as an enabling connection: a synapse of sorts between the opposing forces of top-down planning and bottom-up initiatives. Acting to attract and create common ground for these two forces, architects can eliminate divisiveness and enable the two forces to interact powerfully and productively. Having assumed this role for U-TT, we work with politicians, policy-makers, community groups, global corporations, and international professionals.

Just as we do not assign relative importance or value to top-down versus bottom-up, we believe that the distinction between legal and extra-legal (or peripheral) in urban zones and the valuation of rich or marginalized are counterproductive in envisioning and implementing a new model for urban development. Thus U-TT has deliberately shifted from the formal traditional master plans to a strategy of activist or social architect who operates as initiator, mediator and designer.

The impetus for our research, for our insistence on learning from the social aspects of a city, is a deep concern caused by the loss of diversity we see everywhere and the institutional promotion of cultural homogeneity. Contemporary patterns of urban development have failed to provide inhabitants not only with security, but also with intensity, authenticity, and intimacy. If we are to take a new direction in development, we need a new architectural vocabulary. It is U-TT’s intent to explore possible design responses for contemporary and future cities.

Could you give some direction to how you would define social design?
Our U-TT work from the last five years in Caracas and São Paulo led us to make connections between North Africa, specifically Casablanca and Fez, and Utrecht as well as to look at the political context for interpreting the architectural design of a modern urban landscape developed in the Netherlands in the late 20th century. We raised a variety of questions, and attempted to respond to it: What do the enormous numbers of immigrants mean for 21st century urban design and development? What notion of identity guides the attitudes and activities of individuals and groups in a neighbourhood like Hoograven? What alternatives are currently being developed to describe and analyze today’s societies? How can participation in immigrant societies be encouraged and developed? How can bridges between and among diverse groups and interests be built? How do we overcome stigma and institutionalized discrimination? How do we establish opportunities for equal access for diverse groups without labelling them according to place of origin and ethnicity? What impact does diversity have on the Dutch sense of culture, when culture still is decisively informed by the notion of nation? And how do cultural institutions respond to it? Mobility and migration have proved to be a significant engine of creativity, especially in the arts: why do we not see the effects in major works of art, in performance, in institutions? Is this a question that can only be addressed over time, or can we architects and designers catalyze the process through interventions, urban revitalization, and mediation?

At U-TT we would define social design in terms of architecture and urbanism, as the perpetual redefinition of global systems of urban planning and legislation, to look for those loopholes and unwritten assumptions that can allow various groups freedom of action. We work in a multidisciplinary way, inviting the participation of academics and practitioners from around the world in the effort to link urban development and sustainable design by identifying and exploiting synergies between top-down and bottom-up forces. The proposed urban models that result aim to translate into spatial solutions a society’s need for equal access to housing, employment, technology, services, education, and resources – fundamental rights for all city dwellers.