News Issues Order About Mailing list Support Submit Contact ©MONU


MONU - magazine on urbanism is a unique bi-annual international forum for architects, writers and theorists that are working on topics of urban theory, development and politics. Each issue collects essays, projects and photographs from contributors from all over the world to a given topic. Thus MONU examines topics that are important to the future of our cities and urban regions from a variety of perspectives.

MONU provides a platform for comparative analysis. For example in one of the last issues authors contributed from places as different as Tokyo, Thailand, Detroit, Los Angeles and London. The different viewpoints, contexts and methods of analysis allows to explore topics in a rich fashion. The combination of the writings and projects created in different cultures and with different backgrounds allows to generate new insights in complex phenomena of our cities. For example in the first issue entitled 'Paid Urbanism', essays about the ways European government subsidies and tax policies shape urban form and urban life, gave a great contrast to articles that analyzed farm subsidies and housing policies in the US. Or in the issue #5 on 'Brutal Urbanism' articles from places as Korea, Jerusalem or London all illustrated unique perspectives and reflections on the relationship between violence, upheaval and urban life.

MONU has been recognized already as one of the most innovative and progressive magazines in its field and has been part of an open workspace at the documenta 12 - one of the world's most important exhibitions of modern and contemporary art in summer 2007. MONU was invited as part of the documenta's magazines project. Recently MONU has been exhibited at places such as Omotesando Hills (Tokyo), Casa Encendida (Madrid), LA Forum (Los Angeles), and Czech Design Gallery (Prague).

MONU was founded in 2004 and is directed by editor in chief Bernd Upmeyer together with his Rotterdam based Bureau of Architecture, Research, and Design (BOARD) and managed by MONU's managing and contributing editor Beatriz Ramo. Bernd Upmeyer studied architecture and urban design at the University of Kassel (Germany) and the Technical University of Delft (Netherlands). In 1999 he was awarded with the prestigious biannual research award "Deutscher Studienpreis" donated by the Koerber Stiftung for a study project on new urban design methods and in 2000 he was awarded with an Architecture Scholarship by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Before opening his own practice (BOARD) in Rotterdam in the year 2005, he worked in several Dutch architecture offices, including NL Architects and Bosch Architects. From 2004 until 2008 he taught and did research as Assistant Professor at the department for Urban and Architectural Studies at the University of Kassel. In 2010 he taught as Adjunct Professor at the department of Urban Design at the HafenCity University Hamburg. Currently, he is working on his PhD on Transnational Urbanism.


Comments on MONU:

"While physical information exchange is slowly being supplanted by an online culture of surfing for information, the past ten years of publishing have produced more than a few exceptional artifacts which transcend the contemporary individual’s tendencies toward temporal dabs at intellectualism. One of these projects is MONU." By John Southern
(http://drowninginculture.com/)
(June 11, 2011)

"Monu (Magazine on Urbanism) was born in 2004 in Rotterdam. What was originally an almost underground magazine made available through a pdf dossier and a stapled black and white print has evolved into one of the main independent publications, a reference for the collective intelligence of urbanism, and an icon of exquisite aesthetics."
(http://theamazingjackiepanda.blogspot.com/)
(June 8, 2011)

"I feel it necessary to stress the valuable role that MONU has played in the past few years, specifically for the architecture and urbanism community. As the biggest (to my knowledge) indie publication focused explicitly on urbanism, MONU has provided a voice for many emerging young professionals — a chance to be published and have their ideas heard in print format." By Brendan Cormier
(http://popupcity.net/2011/05/monu-14-editing-urbanism/)
(May 21, 2011)

“MONU is one of the leading independent architecture magazines published today, bringing together challenging themes with interesting architecture writers and theorists. It is excellent and deserves to be read by anyone interested in urban issues.” By Elias Redstone, Curator of Poland’s pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2010
(January 19, 2011)

"MONU’s blend of radical passion and expert design has made the magazine itself the focus of several international exhibitions, including in Los Angeles, Madrid and Tokyo."
(http://www.ideabooks.nl/index.php?op=full&title=26083&what=c&u=monu&page=)
(December 7, 2010)

"In the 13th issue of the Rotterdam-based Magazine on Urbanism (MONU) those livability surveys, or more generally indicators of quality of life in cities, are the focus.[...] Overall I was impressed with how the contributions followed the theme, and how they did so in some quite diverse ways. It's far too easy to establish a theme but then veer from it to include big names that might sell issues. Here the various essays tackle the topic from all sides, not aiming for consensus but for a presentation of what's missing in the lists." By John Hill
(http://archidose.blogspot.com/2010/11/magazine-review-monu-13.html)
(November 2, 2010)

"Combining theory and practice into a diverse, lively, open, and hopeful dialogue, MONU is the new paradigm for journals on urban and architectural thought." (http://jacksoncommunitydesigncenter.blogspot.com/2009/10/monu-11.html)
(October 19, 2009)

"The output of MONU (Magazine on Urbanism) continues to impress, and with issue #11, Bernd Upmeyer and company raise the bar."
(http://infranetlab.org/blog/2009/09/clean-urbanism-dirty-realism/)
(September 8, 2009)

"MONU magazine on urbanism is the sort of journal that catches your eye in the more interesting book shops and seduces you away from whatever it was you went in there for. These journals work by constantly reasserting the value of thinking creatively and in different ways about the world around us."
(http://neighbourhoods.typepad.com/neighbourhoods/2008/09/holy-urbanism.html)
(September 29, 2008)


Interview with Bernd Upmeyer, editor in chief of MONU - magazine on urbanism in June 2009. The questions were posed by architecture student Luca Vandini from the University of Ferrara, Italy.

Luca Vandini: When was MONU born, how and why did you decide to give life to this kind of experimental magazine?
Bernd Upmeyer: The idea came up in 2003, but the first issue appeared a bit later, in the summer of 2004. Originally it was conceived as a way to keep in touch with a friend of mine. We studied together in Kassel, but in 2002 at the end of our degrees, we decided to take different routes: I came to the Netherlands, and he moved to the United States. We were searching for a way to keep in contact, and continue to intellectually challenge ourselves, as we did during our studies.

LV: "MONU" - the title of your magazine is an acronym, where the U stands for Urbanism. Does this refer to the phenomenon or to the field of studies? In other words, is MONU more about urban phenomena or about discussions inside the urbanism discipline?
BU: MONU is more about urban phenomena. What we were aiming at since the very beginning was to explore every kind of urban aspects, everything that appears around the city. We were always intrigued to find out the hidden political, social and economical truths and interdependencies in cities. Nevertheless I could still imagine one day making an issue on traditional topics, such as space and density. The great thing about using the city as a subject is that it allows you to talk about almost everything, and that is what really attracted us since the very beginning.

LV: The choice to publish an entire magazine about urbanism is quite particular in a world overloaded with interior, landscape or architecture publications. Does this choice arise only from a personal feeling, is it a way to fill up a presumed lack, or does it stand on a modernist conception that sees urbanism coming before and going beyond architecture?
BU: I think that this choice has a lot to do with the kind of education I received at the University of Kassel, where I studied in the nineties. There, even if you were a student of architecture, like me, you were always forced to start thinking large-scale. For whatever design we had to do there, we were always asked to think not only about the urban context, but also about the city as a whole. I think that this start to every design really shaped my mind and has been projected onto MONU. At the beginning I thought this way of being trained as an architect was cutting away a lot of interesting aspects, as I originally started studying architecture in order to design first of all architectural objects and not cities. But after a while I understood the power and the potential of this interdisciplinary design approach, and as you can see I am no longer able to escape from it. In Kassel as an architecture student I was more or less forced to do projects together with urban design and landscape design students. Therefore the urban scale became the basis of our discussions.

LV: Every issue of MONU has a title or topic that puts a different adjective or noun next to the word "Urbanism". Why did you make this choice? Do you think you will be able to keep going on this way forever?
BU: Everything started with the topic of the first issue entitled "Paid Urbanism". Paid Urbanism was originally a University project. It was based on the idea of paying people to appear in public spaces that are deserted after shops were closed. We created the "Paid Urbanism Project" to inject artificially life into dead urban areas. It was a reaction to the conditions that we witnessed in the city centre of Kassel after 5 p.m. What was at the beginning only a joke to entertain ourselves as students, became more serious with the time and finally ended up as the topic of the very first issue of MONU. The second issue we wanted to deal with the middle classes and their impact on cities and spontaneously decided to continue with the term "Urbanism" in the title and called the issue "Middle Class Urbanism". After that it became a routine and continues until today. At the beginning we had of course a lot of doubts about using again and again the term urbanism, but we also started appreciating the power of its repetition.

LV: What is the idea behind the "call for submissions"?
BU: This device of "call for submissions" was based since the beginning on the realization that the view of one person is limited. We wanted to open the magazine to different and changing perspectives. We realized that it was not very interesting if every issue would be written by always the same people. So we decided to focus on diversity as the core of the magazine. I believe this way helps MONU to stay fresh.

LV: Can you explain a bit more in depth what the role of the editor in chief of a magazine like MONU is?
BU: The idea is that the editor in chief has to be a sort of moderator, who initiates topics. Like in a conference, congress, or debate the moderator throws the ball and helps it to go as far as possible. You create a topic and hope for interesting reactions that together make the magazine. But one of the most interesting parts of that process is that the result is unpredictable and usually also for me surprising and unexpected. I always learn a lot of new things. That is very exciting and challenging for me. The involvement of different perspectives of different authors always creates something that was not completely intended at the beginning. The calls for submissions are always very speculative and are mostly led by a hope that a topic really might have potential.

LV: In MONU #10 you borrowed the work of an artist for the cover page. What is the role in the magazine of other disciplines such as art; is MONU a publication that is trying to go beyond urbanism or does it look more inside the phenomenon itself?
BU: The integration of more art work is also based on the belief in the quality of diversity and the quality of different perspectives that lead eventually to a greater understanding of things.

LV: Let's talk a bit about the structure of MONU. Your magazine, for example, lacks the classic editorial and doesn't have any periodical column. Why is that?
BU: Actually there is always an editorial. On the first page I always write an editorial that describes and explains the content. It is an overview of the most interesting and most relevant contributions to the magazine. It is a sort of summary that allows you to understand what that issue is made of. Maybe when you talk about an editorial you expect a traditional small article, were the editor gives his personal view on the matter. We stopped writing such editorials after the second issue, because we didn't want to appear too heavy. Magazine editorials can become easily too self-referential. We wanted simply to provide a wide overview of what you could find inside. I think my point of view appears strong enough through the selection of the published pieces and the selection of the topic. I don't think that I need a specific article to express it. I don't want to constrict the audience to bear my opinion every time. What I find most annoying in typical architecture magazines is to be confronted all the time with the very particular opinion of the editor in chief that enjoys too much expressing himself and his view on things. I really want to avoid that. MONU is not about me, it is about its topics.

LV: Moving to a more general approach, what do you think is the role of written words in contemporary urbanism?
BU: Thinking about something is different from thinking and writing about something, because writing helps you to organize ideas and to discover new aspects. Writing is like placing a lot of pieces on a table, assembling them and finding relations between them. When you write about things you are able to connect things that cannot be connected or understood in a conversation. It is a bit like in a design process, where you start with some rules that get transformed during the development of the project. Something new and unforeseen can happen and you get the chance to learn more about certain topics. To find out more about cities is one of the main motivations to produce a magazine like MONU.

LV: If you should engage in some self-criticism, what aspect or point of MONU would you consider less powerful?
BU: I think MONU is way too ambitious and too meaningful for a magazine. MONU is not easy to consume and is therefore not meant to reach a huge audience. MONU is damned to stay small. But although it makes it very difficult to survive, I would not be interested in making it more superficial only for the sake of reaching a greater audience.


MONU is collaborating with contributors from all over the world. The collaborators of the most recent issues include Wouter Vanstiphout, Beatriz Ramo, Bernd Upmeyer, Patty Heyda, Thomas Ruff, Samir El Kordy, Ying Zhou, Brendan M. Lee, Adrià Carbonell, Fredrik Torisson, DoUC (Department of Unusual Certainties), Brendan Cormier, Christopher Pandolfi, Simon Rabyniuk, Nathalie Frankowski, Cruz García, WAI (What About It?), Michael Hirschbichler, Robin van den Akker, Timotheus Vermeulen, Gale Fulton, Stewart Hicks, Mika Savela, Wes Wilson, Geoffrey Thün, Kathy Velikov, Colin Ripley, RVTR, Melissa Dittmer, James Witherspoon, Noah Resnick, UNION3, Felix Madrazo, Alexander Sverdlov, Marieke Kums, Arman Akdogan, Anastassia Smirnova, Henk Ovink, Simone Pizzagalli, OMA, Rem Koolhaas, Ippolito Pestellini, Beatriz Ramo, Lucas Dean, Jarrik Ouburg, Sara Hendren, Sean Burkholder, Adolfo Natalini, Bernd Upmeyer, STAR strategies + architecture, Marinke Steenhuis, Paul Meurs, Jan Bovelet, Miodrag Kuc, Ephraim Joris, Michiel van Iersel, Juha van 't Zelfde, Ben Cerveny, Gijs Hoofs, Michiel Daalmans, Brian Davis, Rob Holmes, Brett Milligan, Patrizia Di Monte, Floris Alkemade, Adriaan Geuze, Jaap van den Bout, Piet Vollaard, Mika Savela, Melissa Dittmer, Amy Bos,Bobby Shen, Luciano Alfaya, Patricia Muñiz, Karin Aue, Jeffrey Koh, Human Wu, Bas van der Horst, Hans Larsson, Michiel van Loon, Ruraigh Purcell, Bernd Upmeyer, Klaas Kresse, Matthew Johnson, Hans Frei, John Southern, Jürgen Krusche, Jennifer W. Leung, Karl Beelen, Roos Gerritsen, A. Srivathsan, DoUC, Brendan Cormier, Christopher Pandolfi, Stefan Gruber, Jason Lee, Doreen Jakob, Mammoth, Stephen Becker, Rob Holmes, Karl Johann Hakken, Maximilian Mendel, Yim Dongwoo, Rustam Mehta, Thomas Moran, Carol Moukheiber; McLain Clutter; Randall Teal, Magriet Smit, Joyce Hwang, Bjarke Ingels, Beatriz Ramo, Simone De Iacobis, Arjan Harbers, Topotronic, Daan Roggeveen, Michiel Hulshof, Bas Princen, Marta Relats, ZUS, Andre Kempe, MVRDV, Samo Pedersen, Matteo Muggianu, Nikonus Pappas, Jacob Boswell, Nathalie Frankowski, Cruz García, John Southern, Tomorrow’sThoughtsToday, Liam Young, Lee Altman, Greg Keeffe, Simon Swietochowski, OMA, Felipe Correa, Claudio Astudillo Barra, Aleksander Tokarz, Amanda Webb, Rogier van den Berg, Bryan Norwood, The Jackson Community Design Center, Daniel Hadley, Brian A Shabaglian, Colin Davies, NL Architects, Peter Dorsey, Ray Lucas, Speedism, Emeka Udemba, Kees Christiaanse, Elliott Malkin, Jesse LeCavalier, Maurizio Scarciglia, Edward Richardson, Carolyn Sponza, Abha Mahajan, Karen Crequer and Matilde Cassani.

Wouter Vanstiphout is part of Crimson Architectural Historians. He is professor of Design and Politics at the Faculty of Architecture at Delft Technical University. From 2000 to 2007 he and Crimson directed the urban transformation project of the Dutch New Town of Hoogvliet. Beatriz Ramo is an architect and urban planner from Spain. She lives in Rotterdam where she founded STAR strategies + architecture in 2006. She holds teaching positions with several institutions in the Netherlands and has lectured internationally about architecture in general and the work of STAR in particular. Bernd Upmeyer is the editor-in-chief and founder of MONU magazine. He is also the founder of the Rotterdam based Bureau of Architecture, Research, and Design (BOARD). Patty Heyda is Assistant Professor of urban design and architecture in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. Portions of her project "Roman Operating System_2000,"conducted with Rem Koolhaas were published in Mutations (Actar, 2001). Thomas Ruff is an internationally renowned German photographer who lives and works in Düsseldorf. Ruff has exhibited widely since his first gallery show at Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, Munich, in 1981. His work has appeared in Documenta 9 (1992), the Venice Biennale (1995 and 2005), the Biennale of Sydney (1996), and the Bienal de São Paulo (2002). Samir El Kordy is a Cairo-based architect. He graduated from the Architectural Department in Cairo University, Faculty of Engineering, 1997. He has worked for OMA/Rem Koolhaas in Rotterdam, and Herzog & de Meuron in Basel. Ying Zhou is an architect and urbanist with the Future Cities Laboratory of the ETH Center in Singapore. She was a researcher and lecturer ETH Studio Basel 2007-2011 with Professors Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. Brendan M. Lee is an architectural designer and principal of ProjectBureaux, a creative agency for design, research and product development. He lives in New York City and is an adjunct faculty member at Parsons, The New School for Design. Adrià Carbonell is an architect currently working and living in Doha, Qatar. In 2009 he established COLLECTIVAA, a studio that works collaboratively in Architecture and Urban Design fields, as well as academia and research projects. Fredrik Torisson is an architect, who has been practising architecture in Sweden, the UK and Germany since 2006.He graduated from Lunds Tekniska Högskola (LTH) and is a member of the Swedish Association of Architects. His published works include the books Embryos and Berlin- Matter of Memory. He is currently living in Berlin. DoUC (Department of Unusual Certainties) is a Toronto-based research and design collective working at the interstices of urban design, planning, public art, spatial research and mapping. Brendan Cormier is an urban designer with an M.Sc from the Bauhaus Universität-Weimar. In the last few years he has spent time living in Germany, Holland, Jamaica, and Canada, working on various urban design and research projects. Christopher Pandolfi is an urban designer with an MA from Domus Academy (Milano, Italy) and has worked on a wide variety of projects in North America, Europe and Asia. Simon Rabyniuk is a Toronto-based visual artist working in sculpture, video, and performance. He has presented work across Canada including. Nathalie Frankowski is a French Architect who graduated in 2008 in the department of Architecture, Art and Philosophy at the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Paris La Villette. In 2008 she co-founded WAI Architecture Think Tank. Cruz García is a Puerto Rican Architect who graduated in 2008 from the Universidad de Puerto Rico. In 2008 he co-founded WAI Architecture Think Tank. WAI (What About It?) Think Tank is a workshop for architecture intelligentsia. Currently based in Beijing, WAI oscillates between Asia, Europe and America. Michael Hirschbichler, born in Graz, Austria was educated in architecture and philosophy. He received a Master's Degree in Architecture from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich). He is currently heading the Bachelor-/Master-studio in architecture and urban design at the chair of Prof. Dr. Marc M. Angélil at ETH Zürich. Robin van den Akker is a cultural philosopher at the Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) and a researcher at TNO Information and Communication Technology. He has written and spoken extensively on everyday life and digital culture, social space and social time, contemporary art and architecture, and the work of Henri Lefebvre. Timotheus Vermeulen is lecturer in Cultural Studies and Theory at the Radboud University Nijmegen. His research interests include contemporary aesthetics, inter- and transmediality, art, cinema, television, the aesthetics and poetics of space, and the work of Jacques Rancière. Gale Fulton is assistant professor of landscape architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has taught landscape architecture and urbanism at Adelaide University in Adelaide, South Australia and Penn State University. His current research focuses on the demise of the North American small park and the social potentials of monstrous landscapes. Stewart Hicks is currently living and working in Champaign, IL. He is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Illinois and co-founder of Design With Company. He has a Master of Architecture degree from Princeton University and was a principal and co-founder of Mitnick Roddier Hicks in Ann Arbor. Mika Savela is an architect and designer, living and working in Helsinki. His special interests lie in contemporary urbanism and the history of modernity. He holds a Master's degree in Architecture from Aalto University in Finland and has written for several independent publications. Wes Wilson received both an Honours Bachelor of Architectural Studies and a Masters of Architecture from of the University of Waterloo School of Architecture, Ontario, Canada, and was recently invited as a sessional lecturer to the University of Waterloo's Architecture Rome Programme in Trastevere, Rome, Italy. Geoffrey Thün is Associate Professor of Architecture at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan and a partner in the research-based practice rvtr. Kathy Velikov is Assistant Professor of Architecture at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, a licensed architect in Ontario, Canada, and a partner in the research-based practice rvtr. Colin Ripley is Associate Professor of Architecture and Director of the Graduate Architecture Program at Ryerson University in Toronto and a partner in the research- based practice rvtr. RVTR is an award-winning design research practice based whose work ranges across scales, from product and building design to the visualization and planning of evolving ecosystems and economies. In 2009, RVTR was the recipient of the Professional Prix de Rome in Architecture from the Canada Council for the Arts. Melissa Dittmer is a design architect and associate at Hamilton Anderson Associates (HAA) a multidisciplinary design firm based in Detroit. She received her Bachelor of Architecture from the Illinois Institute of Technology and her Master of Science in Architecture and Urban Design from Columbia University. James Witherspoon is a designer at Hamilton Anderson Associates in downtown Detroit. He received his Master of Architecture degree from the University of Michigan and his bachelor degree in Architectural History and Philosophy from Connecticut College. Noah Resnick currently teaches and practices architecture and urbanism in the city of Detroit, Michigan. He is the director of the Master of Architecture program at the University of Detroit Mercy, and is a founding principal of uRbanDetail, an architecture and urban design studio. UNION3 is a collective of the three Rotterdam based architecture offices SVESMI, MAKS, and IND that focuses on the problems of renewal projects in European cities. Felix Madrazo is co-founder of Supersudaca and IND [Inter National Design]. He worked from 2004-2006 as an architect, editor and researcher at OMA. He is currently a lecturer and researcher at TU Delft / The Why Factory. Alexander Sverdlov founder of the design practice SVESMI. From 2002 to 2007 he worked as an architect and project architect of large-scale projects at Neutelings Riedijk, West 8, Architecten Cie, and OMA/ AMO. Marieke Kums is an architect and founder of MAKS. From 2003 to 2005 she collaborated with OMA/ Rem Koolhaas and since 2006 she worked with SANAA/Kazuyo Sejima & Ryue Nishizawa in Tokyo. Arman Akdogan studied architecture at University of Mimar Sinan (Istanbul) and at the Berlage Institute (Rotterdam). After Berlage Institute he worked three years at West 8 and OMA. Rotterdam 2005. He started his own practice IND [Inter National Design] in 2007. Anastassia Smirnova is a Rotterdam based author and researcher. She is also co-teaching with Rem Koolhaas (topic of "Preservation") at STRELKA, school for architecture, design and media in Moscow. In 2007 she established her own design practice SVESMI in Rotterdam. Henk Ovink is the Director of National Spatial Planning for the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment. He is also the co-curator for the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2012 "Making City". Simone Pizzagalli is an architect living in Rotterdam. He studied at Politecnico of Milan and the Faculty of Architecture at the TU Delft. Currently he is working at Menabó Architecture. OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture) is a leading international partnership practicing architecture, urbanism, and cultural analysis. OMA sustains an international practice with offices in Rotterdam, New York, Beijing, and Hong Kong. Rem Koolhaas founded OMA in 1975 together with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp. He heads the work of both OMA and AMO, the research branch of OMA, operating in areas beyond the realm of architecture such as media, politics, renewable energy and fashion. Ippolito Pestellini is an Italian architect. Since 2007 he works as an architect and project leader at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture. Recently he has been in charge for OMA's exhibition entitled Cronocaos at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2010. Beatriz Ramo directs STAR strategies + architecture in Rotterdam. STAR is interested in all relevant fields related to architecture. Before founding STAR, Beatriz worked at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in Rotterdam. Lucas Dean graduated Landscape Architecture from RMIT University Australia in 2010. He received the award for best project voted by the student body 2010 for the project Apoptotic Woomera 2035. Jarrik Ouburg runs the architectural practice Office Jarrik Ouburg in Amsterdam and is partner of CoOB Architects. Sara Hendren is an artist in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her projects engage cultural ideas about disability and normativity, the medical humanities, and art-science innovation. Sean Burkholder is an Urban Landscape Designer and Assistant Professor of Landscape architecture at the Pennsylvania State University. Adolfo Natalini was one of the founders of the legendary 60ies architecture firm Superstudio. In 1991 Natalini founded the Florence based office Natalini Architetti. Bernd Upmeyer is the editor-in-chief and founder of MONU magazine. He is also the founder of the Rotterdam based Bureau of Architecture, Research, and Design (BOARD). STAR strategies + architecture is a practice of architecture and urban design based in Rotterdam since 2006. STAR analyzes the relations of architecture and urbanism with their social, political, and cultural contexts. Marinke Steenhuis is chairman of the committee for architecture and building environment for the city of Rotterdam and Quality team Beemster, member of the national H-team [National counsel for conversion issues]. Paul Meurs holds the Restoration and transformation chair at TU Delft. Jan Bovelet studied architecture and Philosophy at Kassel, Cologne, and at the Technical University, Berlin. He worked as scientific contributor for the ShrinkingCities project and at the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau. Miodrag Kuc is an interdisciplinary artist and urban theorist trained as architect/urban planner in various cultural settings. Currently he is doing his PhD at Bauhaus University Weimar. Ephraim Joris is partner of the office Architecture Project. Much of his work currently forms part of a PhD research within the invitational program at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University. Michiel van Iersel is an urbanist, curator and co-founder of Non-fiction, an office for cultural, urban and technological innovation, developing cutting-edge ideas and activities. Juha van 't Zelfde is co-founder of Non-fiction, Office for Cultural Innovation, a vehicle for experiments in art, technology and urban culture. Ben Cerveny oversees research projects at the intersection of game design, urban planning, and participatory culture. Gijs Hoofs is an independent thinker. He also worked for the Delft University of Technology as an assistant-professor. Michiel Daalmans is a consultant at De Wijde Blik, a communications consultancy specialized in Urban Development. Brian Davis is a graduate student at the University of Virginia. He writes the landscape blog faslanyc. Rob Holmes lives and practices as a landscape architect in Virginia. He is co-founder of mammoth, an architectural research and design collaborative. Brett Milligan is the founder of Free Association Design (F.A.D.), which investigates space, place and systems through a range of writings, experiences and design research methods. He is a landscape architect based in Portland, Oregon. Patrizia Di Monte is an architect. She studied architecture at the IUAV in Venice and holds a master and PhD in large scale architecture. In 1998 she founded the Zaragoza based office Grávalos-Di Monte Architects. Floris Alkemade is a Dutch architect, urban designer, and was one of the directors/partners of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), Rotterdam. In 2008 he founded his own office Floris Alkemade Architect (FAA). Adriaan Geuze was one of the founders of West 8 urban design & landscape architecture b.v., a leading urban design practice in Europe. Jaap van den Bout set up "Palmboom & van den Bout, urban designers" together with Frits Palmboom in 1994. He teaches at various universities and academies. Since 2000 he has been a visiting professor at the Delft Technical University. Piet Vollaard is an architect and architectural author/critic. He is the director and initiator of ArchiNed, the architecture site of the Netherlands and teaches at several architecture schools in the Netherlands. Mika Savela is an architect and designer, currently living and working in Helsinki. He is a graduate of the Aalto University in Finland. Melissa Dittmer is a registered architect at the Detroit based design firm, Hamilton Anderson Associates. Amy Bos is a licensed Interior Designer and Graphic Designer based out of Detroit, Michigan. Bobby Shen is currently studying architecture at the University of Auckland. He delves into art, social media, psychology, fashion and writing. Luciano G. Alfaya is a PhD Candidate at the ETSA in Madrid. He completed his training as an architect at the University of Edinburgh and the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam. In 2004 he founded together with Patricia Muñiz his own studio called MMASA. Patricia Muñiz holds an MArch in Urban Culture from the UPC in Barcelona. Together with Luciano G. Alfaya she is currently teaching at the University of Coruña. Karin Aue is the Creative Director of arthesia, an applied creative think tank that is based in Zürich, where she is working at the cross-line between scenario thinking, urban development and creative strategies for both public and corporate clients. Jef Koh is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at the Mixed Reality Lab / Keio-NUS Cute Center at the National University of Singapore and is a multi-talented, trans-disciplinary new media installation artist and designer. Human Wu is a Chinese architect currently working in New York. He was educated as an architect and urban designer at South China University of Technology and Harvard Graduate School of Design. Bas van der Horst, Hans Larsson and Michiel van Loon are currently completing their studies in Architecture at the TU Delft. Ruraigh Purcell is a Business Development Coordinator at ECA International and currently based in San Francisco. Ruraigh spent three years running an analytical team producing city ranking lists concerned with the issue of 'quality of life'. Bernd Upmeyer is the editor-in-chief and founder of MONU magazine. He is also the founder of the Rotterdam based Bureau of Architecture, Research, and Design (BOARD). Currently he is teaching as Adjunct Professor at the department of Urban Design at the HafenCity University Hamburg and is working on his PhD on Transnational Urbanism. Klaas Kresse is an Architect based in the Netherlands. He is one of the founders of the Rotterdam based architecture and research office 'sprikk'. He worked with Bothe, Richter, Teherani in Hamburg and Rem Koolhaas' Office for Metropolitan Architecture' in Rotterdam. Matthew Johnson is an assistant professor at the Gerald Hines College of Architecture, University of Houston. He has worked for Steven Holl and Allied Works Architecture. He graduated from Stanford University with Honors, and from the Yale University School of Architecture. Hans Frei is an architect based in Zürich. His activities are focused on theoretical issues. From 1997 till 2003 he was a professor for Architectural Theory and Design at the University of Kassel. His doctoral thesis was about Max Bill as an architect. John Southern is the director of Urban Operations, a research and design studio based in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Silver Lake. He teaches architectural theory as well as design studio at Woodbury University in Los Angeles, California. Jürgen Krusche has studied music, philosophy and design and art theory in Augsburg, Munich and Zurich. Since 2007 he has headed the research project 'Taking to the Streets', which was initiated by the Department of Architecture, ETH Zurich. Lukas Pauer is studying architecture and urbanism at ETH Zürich and is scholarship recipient of the Erich-Degen and the IKEA foundation. He has participated in research projects at ETH Zürich and Columbia University. Jennifer W. Leung is an architect, critic, and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. Prior to joining the faculty at the Yale School of Architecture, she previously taught at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design and the GSAPP at Columbia University. Karl Beelen is an urban designer. His interests range from mapping and cartography to South Asian urbanism. Roos Gerritsen is an anthropologist from Leiden University working on visual culture and street culture in Chennai. A. Srivathsan is a journalist and adjunct University Faculty member in Chennai. DoUC (Department of Unusual Certainties) is a Toronto-based research and design collective working at the interstices of urban design, planning, public art, spatial research and mapping. Brendan Cormier is an urban designer with an M.Sc from the Bauhaus Universität-Weimar. In the last few years he has spent time living in Germany, Holland, Jamaica, and Canada, working on various urban design and research projects. Christopher Pandolfi is an urban designer with an MA from Domus Academy (Milano, Italy) and has worked on a wide variety of projects in North America, Europe and Asia. Stefan Gruber is principal of STUDIOGRUBER, a Vienna-based design practice for architecture, urban strategies and research. He is a professor of Architecture and Urbanism and the Deputy Head of the Institute for Art and Architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Jason Lee is an architect and urbanist of Canadian extraction who has been practicing in Holland and China for the last 5 years. Doreen Jakob studied Politics and Sociology at the city University of New York Graduate center; Geography, Sociology, and Economics at Humboldt University Berlin. Currently she is Visiting Professor at the University of North Carolina. Mammoth is Stephen Becker and Rob Holmes. They write mammoth, a blog on landscape, architecture, and urbanism. Stephen Becker designs the performance and financing of energy efficient building projects throughout the Northeast. Rob Holmes lives and works as a landscape architect in Washington. Karl Johann Hakken lectures in Sociology and Architecture at Harrington College of Design. Maximilian Mendel is an urban planner, currently living in Warsaw, Poland, where he works as a real estate consultant, chiefly advising residential developers, investors, banks and local government authorities. Dongwoo Yim received his Master of Architecture in Urban Design at Harvard University Graduate School of Design and currently practicing as a designer in Machado & Silvetti Associates in Boston. Rustam Mehta and Thomas Moran are graduates of the Yale School of Architecture, practicing in New Haven and Ann Arbor. Carol Moukheiber is Assistant Professor at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto. McLain Clutter is an architect, writer and an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Randall Teal is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Idaho. Margriet Smit is a real estate developer in Rotterdam. Joyce Hwang is an architect and Assistant Professor of Architecture at University at Buffalo, State University of New York. Bjarke Ingels is a Danish architect. He heads the architectural practice Bjarke Ingels Group which he founded in 2006. Beatriz Ramo graduated in the ETSA of Valencia, Spain. In 2006, she founded STAR strategies + architecture in Rotterdam. Since 2007 Beatriz runs a research studio on the theme "Architecture and Market" at the AAS in Tilburg. Simone De Iacobis was born in Rome and studied there until his architecture diploma. Simone achieved prizes both in architectural and photographic competitions. Arjan Harbers is an urban planner and researcher. In addition to Topotronic, he works for The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL). Topotronic is a Rotterdam based office for urban planning, urban design und urban research. Daan Roggeveen is a freelance architect who previously worked for MADA spam, NL Architects and IPMMC Concepts. Michiel Hulshof is China correspondent for Dutch weekly Vrij Nederland, press agency ANP and Dutch talk-television. Bas Princen lives and works in Rotterdam as an independent photographer focussing on the transformations of the urban landscape. Marta Relats holds a degree in Philosophy from the University of Barcelona and the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. She studied Architecture at the UPC Barcelona and is currently finishing her Masters at the TU Delft under The Why Factory program. ZUS [Zones Urbaines Sensibles] is a Rotterdam based office operating in the urban field producing research, unsolicited architecture, manifests, exhibitions and books. Andre Kempe is an architect, who studied architecture and urban design in Dresden, Paris and Tokyo. He is one of the principals of the Rotterdam based Atelier Kempe Thill. MVRDV was set up in Rotterdam (the Netherlands) in 1993 by Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries. MVRDV produces designs and studies in the fields of architecture, urbanism and landscape design. Samo Pedersen is an architect, currently living and working in Berlin. He has a MSc in urban design from Bauhaus University, Weimar, and Tongji University, Shanghai. Matteo Muggianu graduated in Architectural Enginering from the Facoltà di Ingegneria di Cagliari, Italy. After that he followed a master degree in Urban Management and Architectural Design at Domus Academy in Milan, where he lives and works at the moment. Nikonus Pappas is graduated from the Architecture University of Adelaide, South Australia 2008. He has also studied at La Sapienza University, Rome. Jacob Boswell holds masters degrees in both City and Regional Planning and Landscape Architecture from The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio as well as an undergraduate degree in Cultural Anthropology. Gerd Hauser is the director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics in Germany that deals with research, development, testing, demonstration and consulting in the fields of building physics and holder of the Chair of Building Physics at the Technical University of Munich. Prof. Dr.-Ing. Gerd Hauser is one of the leading researchers for the implementation of the EU Directive on “Energy Performance of Buildings”. Nathalie Frankowski is a French architect graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris La Villette (ENSAPLV) and Co-Founder of WAI (What About It?) A Contemporary Think Tank for Architecture and the City Cruz García is a Puerto Rican architect graduated from the Escuela de Arquitectura de la Universidad de Puerto Rico and Co-Founder of WAI. WAI (What About It?) is a Contemporary Think Tank for Architecture and the City based in Amsterdam. John Southern is the director of Urban Operations, a research and design studio based in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Silver Lake. He teaches architectural theory as well as design studio at Woodbury University in Los Angeles, California. Tomorrow’sThoughtsToday is a London-based think tank exploring the consequences of fantastic, perverse and underrated urbanisms. Darryl Chen is an architect, critic and practitioner on urbanism for a range of publications, schools and private practices. Liam Young currently lives and works in London. After working for Zaha Hadid Architects and LAB Architecture Studio he is now an independent designer and critic. Lee Altman is an architect and urban designer based in NYC. She attended the Israel Institute of Technology, the Politecnico di Milano and Columbia University GSAPP where she received her Masters of Science in Architecture and Urban Design. Greg Keeffe is Downing Professor of Sustainable Architecture, Leeds School of Architecture, Leeds. He is originally trained as an engineer and has 25 years experience in sustainability, energy use and its impact on the design of built form and urban space. develops a model of a new city, as an econose, of mutually compatible functional elements. Simon Swietochowski is a Research Student at Manchester School of Architecture, Manchester UK. OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture) is a Rotterdam based leading international partnership practicing contemporary architecture, urbanism, and cultural analysis. Felipe Correa is an Assistant Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He is an architect and founder of Somatic Collaborative, a research based design practice, which focuses on a speculative approach to architecture and urbanism, and engages a wide host of material geographies and design procedures. Claudio Astudillo Barra is a Chilean architect who studied at the Santa María University’s School of Architecture in the city of Valparaiso, Chile. He is editor of Criptonita team and member of Bangs! Aleksander Tokarz graduated with a Bachelors of Architecture from California College of the Arts. Currently he is working as a project manager at an architectural firm in Stuttgart, Germany. Amanda Webb is an environmental designer in the San Francisco office of Atelier Ten, an environmental design, mechanical engineering and lighting design firm. She received her degree in architecture and philosophy from Yale University. Rogier van den Berg is founding partner of Zandbelt&vandenBerg, office for architecture and urban design in Rotterdam and head of the Department of Urbanism at the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam. Bryan Norwood is a recent graduate of Mississippi State University and currently a graduate student in the philosophy Ph.D. program at Boston University. His current research at the Jackson Community Design Center is on the intersection of poststructuralism and urbanism, and in particular its connection to mid-size metropolitan areas. The Jackson Community Design Center is an urban think tank based out of the Mississippi State University College of Architecture, Art, and Design. Daniel Hadley graduated from the Harvard Divinity School in 2008 with a Masters in Theological Studies, and is currently working on a Masters in Urban Planning at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. Brian A Shabaglian is an artist currently living in Brooklyn, New York. Colin Davies is a writer and the founder and co-editor of the website Limited Language that uses the web as a platform for generating writing about visual communication. NL Architects is an Amsterdam based office. The principals, Pieter Bannenberg, Walter van Dijk and Kamiel Klaasse, officially opened practice in January 1997, but had shared workspace already since the early nineties. Peter Dorsey practices and teaches architecture in New York and Bahrain. Ray Lucas has a PhD in Social Anthropology and has conducted research in the fields of architecture, representation, sensory perception, sound design, cinema, and is currently working at the Departments of Architecture and Geography at the University of Edinburgh. Speedism is the duo Julian Friedauer, Germany, and Pieterjan Ginckels, Belgium. They work in the fields of architecture, architectural theory, visual arts, visual theory, urban tactics, imagineering, visual arts and scriptwriting. Emeka Udemba is an artist from Nigeria. He is also involved in curatorial practices. He lives and works presently in Germany. Kees Christiaanse is an architect and urban planner. In 1989 he founded KCAP Architects&Planners, which holds offices in Rotterdam and Zurich. From 1996 to 2003 he was a professor of architecture and urban planning at the Technical University of Berlin, and since 2003 he is the Chair of Architecture and Urban Design at the ETH in Zürich. Elliott Malkin is an artist, filmmaker, and information architect in New York City. He is the inventor of the laser eruv. Jesse LeCavalier holds degrees from Brown University and from the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently pursuing a doctoral degree at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich where he is also involved in teaching and research activities. Maurizio Scarciglia is an architect and the founder of NAUTA, a Rotterdam based office that focuses on architecture and urban planning. Before opening his own office, he worked at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture. Since 2006 he is teaching and researching at Faculty of Architecture at TU Delft. Edward Richardson is a native of New Orleans and has practiced architecture in Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Mexico and Texas. He studied architecture at both Yale University, and has taught as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Texas and University of New Mexico. Carolyn Sponza is an architect practicing in New York City. Abha Mahajan is a practicing architect based in India, with varied interests including painting and writing. She has been involved in research projects and is an urban Designer from S. P.A., New Delhi. Karen Crequer lives and works in Paris. She examines themes surrounding psychoanalysis and architecture. She has worked on a diversity of projects in some leading international firms such as the Serpentine Pavillon of Rem Koolhaas. Matilde Cassani lives and works between Milano and Barcelona. She has a degree in architecture at Politecinco di Milano and a post graduation degree at UPC in Barcelona. She currently works as an architect and researcher in Milano with Boeri studio.