Hubert Klumpner

Hubert Klumpner (born 22 December 1965 in Salzburg) is an Austrian architect, urbanist, educator, researcher, curator and activist.

Klumpner is a tenured professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich), where he directs since 2010 the Chair of Architecture and Urban Design. He is the general director of the Center for Architecture, Society and Environment, ETH CASE (Wohnforum). In the Institute of Science Technology and Policy (ISTP) he directs a research group that explores how science, technology and policy are transforming urbanization processes.

Klumpner was associate professor of architecture and planning at the Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) at Columbia University, New York from 2007 to 2010.

Klumpner is also the founder and design principal, of the international, Swiss based architecture and planning studio, urbanthinktank_next (uttnext), established in 2019, with a partner office in Medellin (COL). As co-founder of Urban-Think Tank (U-TT), he is regarded as one of the originators of the “social turn”, a movement that had its breakthrough in 2010 in New York with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) exhibition "Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement”, curated by Andres Lepik. On the 2021 Vienna Biennale for Change under the directorship of Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, where Klumpner curated Architecture and Urban Design, the Forbes Magazine wrote: "The exhibition may therefore ultimately be most productive as a clearinghouse for evaluating which tools – practical and metaphorical – will be needed to change the planetary mindset."

Life Early life: 1965-1998 Hubert Klumpner was born 22 Dec.1965 in Salzburg, Austria where his family moved shortly before his birth, as the third child of Karl-Heinz Klumpner, a customs officer, and Lydia Klumpner (born Bayer) from Germany. Klumpner's parental grandparents are from a Moravian-Silesian family of architects, builders, and mining entrepreneurs (Karl Klumpner, Moritz Klumpner, Emanuel Klumpner, Leopold Klumpner) from Fulnek (CZE), where they lived for generations before the flight and expulsion after WWII.

Hubert Klumpner grew up between Salzburg and the 350-year-old country house of his maternal grandparents in the Bavarian Alps across the border without a paved road, telephone, flushing toilette, or warm water.

After graduating from a technical high school (HTL), where he passed an apprenticeship as a carpenter, bricklayer, and draftsman with distinctions, From the perspective of the global south, resilience, risk, in post-apartheid, post-crisis, or post-conflict conditions.

They first came to public attention at the 4th International Architecture Symposium, ARCHISYMP in Pontresina, Switzerland, only the day before the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Engaging in direct discourse with Winy Maas, Saskia Sassen, and Sergio Benvenuto moderated by Kristin Feireiss at the peak of the star-architecture cult, their talk was titled, "The Cities Poor Belt: dialectics of poverty and nobility," in what architecture theorist and historian Bart Lootsma, present in the auditorium, remembers as follows: "But when architects like Thom Mayne, Wolf Prix, and Hani Rashid could not fly in on September 11th because of the grounding of all flights, you two presented us a radically alternative program for architecture, based on inclusivity, not exclusivity, and collaboration instead of individualism."

since 2010 Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich, Professor of Architecture and Urban Design 2004-2007 Universidad Central de Venezuela, UCV Caracas, School of Architecture, Adjunct Professor 2003 Universidad Simon Bolivar, USB Caracas, School of Architecture, Visiting Professor 2001-2002 Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts, Assistant Professor 1993-1994 Academy of Applied Arts, Vienna, Assistant, Masterclass of Prof. Hans Hollein

Selected projects Current

ONDA, Multifunctional Green Corridor Building, Medellin, Colombia Centro Cultural Villas de San Pablo, Barranquilla, Colombia General Urban Plan, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina Completed

2024 Megacolegio, Cartagena, Colombia 2021 Think tank station, Mobile installation 2019 Rural-Think Tank, Growing House, Eichham, Germany Torre David: Informal Vertical Communities, Lars Müller, Zurich, 2013, ISBN 3-03778-298-6 Re-Living the City, UABB Shenzhen Biennale for Urbanism, Actar, New York, 2016, ISBN 978-1-9451-5003-6 Reactivate Athens, 101 Ideas, Ruby Press, Berlin, 2017, ISBN 978-3-944074-16-0 Urban-Think Tank, The Architect and the City, Hatje-Cantz, Berlin, 2021, ISBN 978-3-7757-4286-3 SDG-Volume 11: Sustainable Cities and neighborhoods, MDPI Books, Basel, 2021-22, ISBN 978-3-03897-871-8

Selected awards

2024 Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize / MCHAP (5th Cycle), Nomination, withdrawn by Author 2020 Rethinking the Future Awards Awardee 2018 RIBA International Prize Longlist for World's Best Building 2018 UN-Habitat Dubai International Award for Best Practices 2017 Curry Stone Foundation Design Prize 2012 Golden Lion, Best Project at the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2012 Silver Holcim Award, Global 2011 Gold Holcim Award, Latin America 2010 Ralph Erskine Award, Royal Swedish Architects, Stockholm, together with Alfredo Brillembourg 1994 National Olympic Committee Best Project Award, Rome 1993 Rudolph Schindler Award, Los Angeles, together with Johannes Kraus 1993 City of Vienna Architecture Award, Best Architect under 30, Vienna

Selected curatorship

2023 15th Days of Architecture Sarajevo, together with Michael Walczak 2022 UABB Shenzhen Biennale 2021 Vienna Biennale for Change under the directorship of Christoph Thun-Hohenstein 2015 UABB Shenzhen Biennale 2014 Venice Biennale of Architecture, SÍ / NO: The Architecture of Urban-Think Tank 2012 Venice Biennale of Architecture, Torre David 2008 Utrecht Biennale for Social Design 2007 Rotterdam Biennale 2005 São Paulo Biennale, Representing Venezuela