Alfredo Brillembourg's 'Urban Think Tank'

The Department of Architecture and Design cordially invites you to a public lecture by Alfredo Brillembourg entitled "Urban Think Tank." All are welcome.

Alfredo Brillembourg

Alfredo Brillembourg was born in New York in 1961. He received his Bachelor of Art and Architecture in 1984 and in 1986 his Master of Science in Architectural Design from Columbia University. In 1992 he received a second architecture degree from The Central University of Venezuela and began his independent practice in architecture. Since 1994, he has been a member of the Venezuelan Architects and Engineers Association and has been a guest professor at the University Josi Maria Vargas, the University Simon Bolivar and at the Central University in Venezuela. In 1993, Brillembourg founded the Urban Think Tank in Caracas, Venezuela, a multi-disciplinary practice dedicated to high-level research and design on a variety of subjects connected with the practicalities of contemporary architecture and urbanism. The philosophy of the UTT is to deliver innovative yet practical solutions through the combined skills of architects, civil engineers, environmental planners and landscape architects.

Brillembourg has also been a regular guest at studio juries at The Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University, and at The Cooper Union School for the Advancement of Science and Art. He is currently Visiting Professor at Columbia University, where he teaches advanced studios called S.L.U.M. LAB (Sustainable Living Urban Model) with his partner Hubert Klumpner. The S.L.U.M LAB focus is on a studio that develops a strategy of "urban retrofitting" rather than demolishing problem areas of a city. Working with politicians, policy makers, community groups, global corporations, and international professionals, the studio believes that the oppositions of 'legal' and 'peripheral' urban areas, the rich and the marginalized, are equally constitutive: therefore new models of city visioning must be implemented for developing global cities.