26’10 south Architects (say twenty-six ten) was named after the latitude of Johannesburg by founders Anne Graupner and Thorsten Deckler. Back in 2004 this was a clear commitment to one of the most dynamic and challenging cities in the world. Shaped by a succession of repressive regimes, we wanted to play a part in its transformation into a more democratic and humane city. Fifteen years on and 26’10 has built key infrastructure and institutional projects, over 2000 subsidized houses and has initiated a number of events, exhibitions and publications on current themes in architecture and urbanism.

With the awareness of this reality Thorsten Deckler and Anne Graupner set themselves the task to use the formal, material and detail aspects of architecture to maximize the social potential of their projects within this context.

Their built output is informed by a curatorial practice which allows them to document their projects and their context as case-studies aimed at shifting the discourse around architecture into a more direct relationship with society.

26’10 South Architects is continuing to pursue built work which is pragmatically suited to its local context and the practice is in the process of transitioning into a property agency with the view of developing its own projects.

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26’10 south Architects (say twenty-six ten) was named after the latitude of Johannesburg by founders Anne Graupner and Thorsten Deckler. Back in 2004 this was a clear commitment to one of the most dynamic and challenging cities in the world. Shaped by a succession of repressive regimes, we wanted to play a part in its transformation into a more democratic and humane city. Fifteen years on and 26’10 has built key infrastructure and institutional projects, over 2000 subsidized houses and has initiated a number of events, exhibitions and publications on current themes in architecture and urbanism.

With the awareness of this reality Thorsten Deckler and Anne Graupner set themselves the task to use the formal, material and detail aspects of architecture to maximize the social potential of their projects within this context.

Their built output is informed by a curatorial practice which allows them to document their projects and their context as case-studies aimed at shifting the discourse around architecture into a more direct relationship with society.

26’10 South Architects is continuing to pursue built work which is pragmatically suited to its local context and the practice is in the process of transitioning into a property agency with the view of developing its own projects.

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In 2010 Saskia Beer unsolicitedly adopted Amstel3, a 250 ha office district in Amsterdam with a 30% vacancy rate. After the municipality had to withdraw from their top-down redevelopment plans, her initiative Glamourmanifest built a multi-stakeholder network and support base around the area transformation. The size and impact of the project evolved incrementally and since May 2016 it forms the test bed for the smart participatory urban planning dashboard TransformCity®.

TransformCity® won the second prize (civic engagement) in Le Monde International Smart Cities Innovation Awards 2016. It was winner in the ‘call for solutions’ in the World Smart City Exp and the first use case in the Citizen City Action Cluster of European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities (EIP-SCC). As a leading urban pioneer, Saskia Beer gives regular talks to both students and professionals and is actively involved in the international discourse about new strategies and technologies for urban planning. She lectured at various universities and attended several urban award juries.

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Yiorgos is passionate about the relationships between the spatial structure of cities and their socioeconomic and cultural life. He trained as an architect in Paris and holds an MSc from The Bartlett – UCL, London, where developed a keen interest in, empirical research and the application of quantitative methodologies on understanding cities. His current research concerns how the configuration of urban waterfronts impacts on the evolution of coastal cities in Greece.

For 2014—2015 he was an architectural design studio lecturer in Umea School of Architecture (Sweden). Yiorgos Papamanousakis has been an advisor and a speaker in various initiatives and projects focused on the city (UrbanIxD, Leipzig Plus Kultur), and a reviewer in academic journals (Urban Design International). He is based in London.

Urban Transcripts story

“Urban Transcripts was born of a desire to create a new tool through which to explore the city as a complex phenomenon in a participatory and cross-disciplinary way. It was initiated in 2010 as an annual programme of events such as exhibitions, conferences, and workshops, focused on, and hosted in, a different city every year. Our point of departure was to grasp and effectively communicate the complexity of the city through an “urban transcript” that becomes a basis for opening up city making to participatory and interdisciplinary approaches. In 2013, Urban Transcripts shifted its activity from an annual event to a multitude of projects on the city. In each of our projects creating a transcript out of a complex urban reality is what we see as the first step towards resolving an urban problem and generating successful solutions. The “urban transcript” has remained a central component in our pursuit to ‘read’ cities and propose new ‘writings’ on them.”

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Antje founded SmarterBetterCities together with Jan Halatsch as an ETH Zurich spin-off in 2012. Up to 2013, Antje had been a research scientist at the Chair of Information Architecture ETH Zurich. In addition to her degree in Architecture, Antje has a background in Computer Science, with a strong focus on information visualization.

The initial goal of the company was to provide easy-to-use and intuitive tools for urban planning and management. They did so with their web-based tool CloudCities, an online platform where users can view, upload, share and discuss 3D city models.

This “YouTube for cities”, as Antje Kunze calls it, runs on any device that has a web browser. You can bring all of your design data into CloudCities’ practical and eye-catching dashboards without any prior coding knowledge necessary. This web-based tool is especially designed to help governments, city planners, architectural companies and consulting companies with their planning scenarios and city visualizations.

Keep on reading to learn from an architect with a background in computer science on how she started her business, the kinds of services and products she creates, and how she envisions the future of the building industry and energy-aware urban planning – all from a simple web browser.

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