Teaming up with LandAid, a charity who aim to end youth homelessness, they agreed to donate to the cause for every model received to promote the donation of schemes to the platform.

With the help of over 100 architecture practices this year, VU.CITY is now showcasing more than 500 consented schemes in their interactive cities platform and have raised a generous £8,650 for the charity. You can now see VU.CITY on display at the NLA Exhibition Centre on Store Street in London.

VU.CITY is a 3D Model tool that has been developed to help Local Planners, Architects and Developers design and plan cities in a more informed way. London is their largest model, covering 800 sq km of the city, with Belfast, Manchester, Birmingham, Brighton and Oxford also available to licence.

How can I help the homeless this winter?

If you would like to do a little something to help the homeless this year, below are some of LandAid’s fantastic recommendations:

• Tell Streetlink – download the app to report when you see someone sleeping rough
• Buy a few basics for them; a hot soup, coffee, sandwich or even a toothbrush and toothpaste will be greatly appreciated
• Acknowledge them, and stop for a chat when you have some time
• Contact your local homeless shelter to volunteer – the local causes are always in need of assistance
  
  

The post LandAid and VU.CITY Team Up to Help Young Homeless in London appeared first on Archipreneur.

Starting a company can be extremely stressful. Fresh graduates, freelancers and directly employed architects looking to create startups face various initial obstacles and need to have a clear view of the operating model for their businesses. They have to choose where to cut costs, which can relate to choice of location, office space and limited living expenses.

Following the guidelines of The Lean Startup method – popularized by author and entrepreneur Eric Ries – can be very beneficial for the early phase of a company’s development. This can mean focusing on budget-friendly setups, and creating businesses on the idea of developing products and productizing design services. Being part of an entrepreneurial community can also influence the way owners grow their businesses, as it provides opportunities to establish valuable contacts and partnerships.

We have compiled a list for 6 startup hubs in Europe, which includes established centers for entrepreneurship as well as cities emerging as exciting new places for experimentation at the intersection of digital technology and architecture.

#1 London

London is Europe’s number one start-up hotspot focused mostly on digital creatives and businesses. The UK’s capital is also proving to be a great place for emerging architecture firms. While it has some of the highest real estate prices in the world – something that can be tricky to navigate for start-ups – the soaring house prices and a deepening housing shortage in London is proving to be the right impetus for architects to develop unusual design solutions. Awkwardly shaped sites and infill lots are being eyed as opportunities for innovation.

The emergence of “infill architecture” is allowing less established firms to creatively apply their ideas in real world. We’ve already seen London-based startups like Assemble, who has received a huge amount of attention thanks to their entrepreneurial attitude to architecture. They have won the famous Turner Prize with their Granby Four Streets project, an urban regeneration initiative to preserve and revive a cluster of Victorian-era terraced houses in Toxteth, Liverpool.

Another London-based start-up, the Photon Project, tackles the idea of modular architecture and wellbeing. The firm plans to build what it claims to be the world’s first all-glass, modular residential structure designed to address the benefits of natural light on human health. The proposal is part of the Photon Project, a four-year study on the biological effects of daylight in the built environment and that aims to gather evidence to support improvements in how building occupants live and work.

#2 Berlin

Berlin is an established startup hub, and currently the one of the best cities to launch a new business. Innovators are drawn to Berlin as one of Europe’s most international cities where cheaper living costs allow entrepreneurs to save money and invest it into building better products and hiring great people. Berlin is a relatively affordable city compared to the rest of the country, as well as other European capitals such as London or Stockholm.

It offers co-working spaces and hubs such as the Factory Berlin, a startup campus in Berlin-Mitte that brings the best technology businesses together with early stage startups and talents by providing an outstanding work environment, a curated community of founders, and high-quality events.

#3 Amsterdam

Along with London and Berlin, Amsterdam is one of the largest startup hubs in Europe. Its multicultural population and business-friendly environment, along with ample opportunities for startups to get mentoring make it a great environment for archipreneurs. The city’s budding startup scene is dominated by software development, smart energy and 3D-printing, among others.

One of the most prominent accelerators in the Netherlands is based in Amsterdam. Startupbootcamp, founded by Patrick De Zeeuw, Alex Farcet, Carsten Kolbeck, and Ruud Hendriks in 2010, focuses on “smart city and living space” solutions, smart energy and smart building. The recently launched Sharing City initiative that connects startups with the corporate world through city facilities. Dutch company MX3D plans to 3D-print an entire bridge in Amsterdam in collaboration with Autodesk and construction and civil engineering company Heijmans.

#4 Lisbon

Affordable rent, low-cost living and a growing startup scene are attracting young creatives to Lisbon, where a vibrant entrepreneurial community is exploding. While Portugal’s government is working to recover the country from the last economic crisis, startups and digital nomads are using various tax incentives to set up their offices in Lisbon. According to results from data comparison site Numbeo, rent prices in Lisbon are almost 70% lower than in London and overall cost of living is almost 50% lower in Lisbon by comparison.

The surplus of empty buildings has introduced low rents and living costs. This, coupled with a growing ecosystem of entrepreneurship, is perfect for startups whose businesses often have low or no revenue in initial phases of operation. Here, designers work on revitalizing abandoned buildings, build temporary structures and co-working spaces out of shipping containers. Lisbon has received the name of Europe’s most entrepreneurial region for 2015, with numerous startups, venture capital firms, incubators and accelerators providing great opportunities to creatives.

#5 Dublin

Several up-and-coming architecture firms and an array of startup funding and support programs dominate new Irish architecture. As a gateway to world markets, Dublin is well connected to the rest of Europe, but offers a smaller number of office spaces, which are also more costly, compared to Lisbon. However, the city boosts favorable low-tax regime and a supportive environment for startups.

Ireland has already attracted a huge level of foreign direct investment, particularly from the USA. Several American companies have chosen Ireland because of its pro-business environment, especially in the tech industry. Those working at the intersection between digital technology and architecture will love this emerging startup hub.

For example, FenestraPro is a technology company based in Dublin, Ireland, which provides cloud-based software tools for architects to optimize design of building façades. FenestraPro is an authorized developer with Autodesk Revit and also works closely with some of the leading architectural practices and industry experts. Its co-founder Dave Palmer – architectural technologist by trade and former DIT lecturer in the School of Architecture – started the company in 2012 alongside Simon Whelan after the pair had run their own firm for several years.

#6 Prague

Startup hubs are on the rise in Eastern European countries. Governments are building infrastructure and public VC funds that support startup hubs. This growth is expected to continue through the creation of new accelerators, co-working spaces, mentoring opportunities and reliable funding options. Prague is great place to be an entrepreneur, and an investor. Because of the lack of major competitors, the city is ideal for smaller companies and teams, supported by incubators and accelerators fostering talent.

One of the long-term initiatives that acts as an idea incubator is the Negrelli Viaduct project, organized by CCEA in 2013. It focuses on the new use of the spaces under the famous viaduct, merging urbanism, architecture and art. The CCEA initiated the project in the past few years, together with partners from the public and private sectors. In 2016, the project was supported by the Swiss-Czech Cooperation Programme.

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Do you have first hand experiences working as an archipreneur in any of these cities? What other emerging startup hubs do you think could appeal to archipreneurs?

The post Booming Cities: 6 European Startup Hubs for Architects appeared first on Archipreneur.

This week’s interview is with Yiorgos Papamanousakis, Founder and Managing Director of Urban Transcripts, a firm dedicated to exploring the ‘city’ as a complex and evolving phenomenon that should be accessed and discussed across disciplinary boundaries.

Cities and the way we live in and respond to them have been topics of focus in recent years. Widely distributed magazines have added a specific section for the topic in their publications, TED talks explore cities in a separate category and cities are an especially hot topic for industry leaders from the tech scene.

It will be very interesting to see how cities, their transportation links and their residents’ responses to growth will change over the coming years. So it is great that architects can position themselves as experts on this topic more broadly.

Let’s hear what Yiorgios has to say about his approach to making cities by bringing concepts from design and research together with the view of an architect. And how to build a business around it…

I hope you enjoy the interview!

What made you decide to start Urban Transcripts? Was there a particular moment that sealed the decision for you?

Urban Transcripts is, in a way, a product of the crisis. It was in 2009 when, after all the years of studying and/or working in architecture, I found myself in London at the peak of the [financial] crisis, having just completed my MSc in UCL and looking for a job that no one could actually offer me.

Architecture firms were continuously making people redundant, small offices were closing down – it wasn’t nice and didn’t look it would get any better. So I decided it was the time to make my own job. I didn’t have many options anyway. And London helped a lot because, despite the crisis, it’s a place that gives you the feeling that everything new and different to what you know already is possible.

Why this new thing was Urban Transcripts, was because of what I saw as a growing collaboration and communication gap amongst different approaches and professions that deal with the city. I started UT because I wanted to create a platform that can bring together different disciplines, and people with different professional, creative, or academic expertise, and enable a broader collaboration to solve common problems.

What major problems and opportunities do cities face in the 21st century? And what services does your company provide to create successful solutions for re-shaping the urban fabric?

In the last decade we’re witnessing cities becoming themselves as organisms – an object of research and debate. It is no coincidence that Urban Studies programs in universities around the world are multiplying; even The Guardian has launched a “Cities” section now.

It seems that many disciplines have been regrouped into what appears like a city science. There is in this sense a reframing of problems and issues through a ‘city lens’. And rightly so: when socio-economic problems are seen through this ‘city lens’, architecture and urban design become truly relevant as effective spatial tools through which to address greater challenges.

Challenges such as social exclusion and increasing inequality have a spatial component: it is revealing to look at the evidence from spatial analysis studies on how, for example, poverty and spatial patterns relate to each other.

Therefore, many if not all of the challenges of the city are also world challenges: inequality, social exclusion, unsustainable environmental practices, inadequate access to housing, break-up of local communities as a result of gentrification, loss of the public spaces of the city to private and market-oriented interests.

Further, when we look beyond Europe and North America, large parts of the world are entering urbanization with a remarkable speed: China is the obvious example, with whole new cities being developed from scratch.

This new era of urbanization, while it can aggravate these challenges in an unpredictable way, can equally provide us with an opportunity to make the best use of our urban design and programming tools to have a real impact on society – to change society through spatial design.

I guess this is our ambition as a company: to produce solutions that, by redesigning the structure of space and the way that we programm uses and activities in it, can have a greater impact on urban life and society.

We started our work by bringing together people who share an interest about urban development. Urban festivals, conferences, workshops are the pillars upon which we have based our development. Currently, after expanding our activities to research and design and growing our network of collaborators, we are proposing a 3-fold service for the city based on research, public participation, and urban design.

We aim to fuse expert research knowledge and public participation into the design process and provide urban solutions that are sustainably successful exactly because they are not only grounded in research but equally reflect the interests and visions of community stakeholders and the project’s broader public.

Our services include a) research and consulting, b) workshops and public events, and c) urban design projects and studies. Each project is for us a unique urban problem to resolve, the exact approach is always a unique mix of these three components in response to the requirements and the particularities of the brief.

What clients do you usually work for?

We have a good record of collaborations with local government and academia. Our services are proposed to municipalities and urban developers as the main clients, while we often engage universities and other professional or academic bodies as partners in these projects. However, it may well be that we are developing a research project only with academic partners, for example.

Also, a lot of our early work is self-initiated. Often, it has been us that set up and planned a project and then sought to form partnerships in order to realize it. There are many ways to do things and to engage clients and partners into something, as long as it is as interesting for them as it is for us.

How will technology impact the cities of the future in your opinion?

Well cities are technology in themselves: from large-scale infrastructure projects to the IT systems involved whenever you use your pass within an urban transport system. I find particularly interesting the technological developments in the fields of interaction design when this is applied on an urban scale.

Urban society is in essence all about interactions, between people with other people, spaces, devices and machines that we use to get from one place to another and do this or that thing.

I think technological innovations in this field can have a huge impact on how we experience ‘the city’ in the future, not only because they will create new products or services, but because they have the potential of changing the ways we interact with one another and with our surroundings.

Do you have any advice for “Archipreneurs” who are interested in starting their own business?

An old professor of mine used to say: “show me where the problem is”! I think that in order to create a new business that has real value in terms of being useful to the world and equally successful for oneself it needs to be able to offer a solution to a well-defined problem. So defining the problem is a good beginning in order to start making use of ideas towards a new business.

Then, all the things that you don’t know about running a business: the admin, the accounts, the law, all these great little things, be prepared to become an expert in all of them.

And have a plan! Not so much for following it, but for enabling you to see all the things that you didn’t manage to follow! If there is no plan, you can never measure your actual achievements against what you initially set up to do, so you can’t progress.

Last, faith, not in God, but in yourself and the people you work with.

How do you see the future of architecture? In which areas (outside of traditional practice) can you see major opportunities for up and coming architects?

It has always surprised me how rich (and long) architectural education really is and how limited the professional life of an architect can often become. Due to their long and project-oriented training, I think architects are great problem-solvers and excellent visual and verbal communicators.

This set of skills can be applied in many different professional activities: scientific research, consulting, project management, IT solutions design and programming, the real estate industry…

I would like to think that, in the future, architecture becomes bolder in its efforts to shape society and [becomes] less obsessed with beautiful objects. I guess what I’m saying is that architecture – in order to survive as something more than an aesthetic exercise for the privileged few – it has to become relevant for the many.

It can do that only by reaffirming, through its own practice, that designing space is not decorating it with beautiful objects but designing the material support or human interaction.

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*Urban Transcripts is now looking for a business partner to join the company as their Head of Business Development. Visit http://urbantranscripts.org/?p=3590 for more details.

About Yiorgos Papamanousakis

Architecte DPLG MSc ARB

The founder of Urban Transcripts, Yiorgos initiated the company’s work by directing international collaborative projects – exhibitions, workshops, conferences – on the critical exploration of cities (Athens, 2010; Rome, 2011, London 2012; Berlin, 2014). Currently he is working towards the development of Urban Transcripts into a network of experts on the city, whose work encompasses design, research, and public participation.

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 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.

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