The urban research Gang (urG), is an assistive and implemental global network for thought and action on the city that focuses on supporting professionals and students to achieve goals on research through a group of individuals eager to help and connect with others around the world. The urG has created a tool that enables people to interact through an interface that will keep imagination alive. It is compelling for research, one that makes inferences and deductions through observation and constant analysis that can be thought as game and will allow producing ideas, concepts, and hypothesis for design, arts and architecture through collaborative achievement. We asked people to observe and imagine multiple possibilities for the experimentation and for improvement on human interactions.
The urG engages emotions and reinforces social concepts; it meets and confronts visual constraints and its effects, and it also promotes change for improvement. The urG is trying to redefine the idea of collaborative research, but at the same time is formulating a talk among diverse participants. It is interested in producing and promoting urban, architectural and artistic work from professionals and researchers from everywhere in the world and without having references based on aesthetic languages or rules. The urG simply seek to experience interactions through the web and promote these on real or fictitious situations.
Projects of different kinds and inputs should result in semantics of the urban field. The urban realm not seen through a theoretical lens, but only based on observed experience: the planned and the spontaneous. The main objective is to establish a network of city knowledge and how to improve it, evolving not only architects and planners, but ordinary people as well. By-the-book meets Streetwise.
The comprehensive information from analysis will embody an open online Atlas, with special features for collaborators and research groups. It will be a useful database by itself, but a further process of knowledge generation is planned, the identification of similar structural, social or atmospheric situations across the globe and the possibility of transposition of positive interventions or features from one to another. This stage would be more experimental in character, and could be seen as a readymade research used in finding the right tendencies of intervention or vision, to be later translated into local architectural action.
The everyday city will have finally found a use of new technologies such as this social networking. It is through photographs, reflections, analysis and graphs that the information can be stated as well as putting the objectives under scrutiny.
Founders
Luis Othon Villegas-Solis
He earned a degree in architecture from Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara and a Master in Design Studies from Harvard University. At Harvard he was teaching assistant for Paola Antonelli, curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA New York. He collaborated as research assistant to Francois Vigier and Mona Serageldin at the Center for Urban Development Studies at Harvard. He has worked for Enrique Norten in New York and Lawrence Weiner at the Snow Show in Finland, and as design manager for Rockwellgroup in New York. He is currently the Chairman of the School of Architecture and Interior Architecture at CEDIM, Monterrey Mexico and has been chair professor of Theory of Architecture at the ITESM Campus Guadalajara, as well as design studio professor at UAG. Founder of lvs-architecture he practices in Mexico and the USA.
Diego Calderon Barba
Received his Bachelor and Master of Science degrees with honors in the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio (Switzerland), studying with Peter Zumthor, Aires Mateus and Elia Zenghelis. Collaborated with Aires Mateus in Portugal, JC Name in Mexico and Aldo Celoria in Switzerland. Received the Citta’ di Padova Award, and finalist at the Architecture and Urbanism Biennale 2008 in Lisbon among other prizes. Jr. Editor for PISO ciudad al ras magazine. Currently develops projects in association with Borja Fernandez. He practices in the UK and Mexico.
Associates
Alessandro Martinelli
Graduated at Accademia di Architettura, Università della Svizzera Italiana, under the guidance of prof. arch. Mario Botta in 2006, being awarded with Boni Prize for the graduation project. In 2001-2002 he worked for Stefano Boeri (Milano). Awarded with the OTIA (Order of Tessiner Architects) Acknowledgement and exhibited at RAAS - ACTAR gallery (Milano). In 2006 he worked for i.CUP, academic institute directed by prof. arch. Josep Acebillo, as project editor for the research on the swiss territorial condition "LNL" published by Accademia di Architettura (Mendrisio) in 2008. Involved since 2008 at Berlage Institute (Rotterdam) he took part to the research "The BID 2.0" about the Olympic City and led by Winy Maas and Mark Joubert , taking part at NAi exhibition "NL28 Olympisch Vuur" in 2008. Today, while running a stable cooperating with emmestudio (Bergamo) he is involved in the development of some independent projects in Italy.
Paulo Moreira
Earned a degree in architecture from Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto, Portugal (2005) and MA degree in Cities Design and Urban Cultures from the London Metropolitan University, UK (2009). Visiting student at Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio, Switzerland (2002/03) where attended Atelier Peter Zumthor and Atelier Heinz Tesar. Traineeship at Herzog & de Meuron in Basel, Switzerland (2003/04). Awarded in the competition Interventions in the City by the Lisbon Architecture Triennale (2007). Founding member of the multidisciplinary platform Latencias Urbanas, funded by Generalitat de Catalunya (2007) and displayed in the Centro de Cultura Contemporanea de Barcelona (2009). Founder of Z-A-interaction, a series of casual meetings of international creative people. Awarded the Noel Hill Scholarship by the American Institute of Architects – UK Chapter (2009) and the Prize for Social Entrepreneurship by the Department of Architecture and Spatial Design - London Metropolitan University (2009) for an on-going research on the architecture of education in Africa.
Teo Valli
Graduated at Accademia di Architettura, Università della Svizzera Italiana, under the guidance of prof. arch. Valentin Bearth in 2007. Among 2003 and 2006 he developed an independent research about the profession of architecture in Europe that has been published by MAP, awarded with the OTIA (Order of Tessiner Architects) Acknowledgement and exhibited at RAAS - ACTAR gallery (Milano). He is now working as a free lancer in Barcelona.