Kerem Halbrecht is an architect and a public space producer. He founded 72 Hour Urban Action that created tens of urban interventions with designers and residents in cities around Europe and the Middle East. Kerem is also architect and co-founder at The Spaceship, a pioneering independent work-live-share space that has become a center of free expression in Tel Aviv since 2007. Recently he co-founded Just Add People, a group that develops formats for playful spatial reflection. Since 2016 Kerem is conducting research and development for the Goethe Institut in Rotterdam, Kyoto and Los Angeles for activation of citizen participation in the design and management of the built environment. Kerem had exhibited and presented around the globe, in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Harvard Graduate School of Design, UC Berkeley, MIT Media Lab and MoMA PS1, among others.

umschichten is an artistic practice based in the Wagenhallen in Stuttgart (Germany). The studio run by Lukasz Lendzinski and Peter Weigand uses temporary architecture as an approach for immediate action and creates built interventions in order to display local needs, ideas or passion.

umschichten visualizes theories, problems or a constellation of men and material by thinking about urban identities and the representation of different social and cultural groups in a city. They work fiercely on the boarders of love and fear in the urban space.

Since 2008, studio umschichten has operated in the fields of architecture, art and sculpture, and focuses on the role of temporary installations in shaping urban space. With an environmentally conscious approach, we think that architecture can and should work by incorporating resources that already exist in an area, rather than creating more. ! umschichten’s aim is to restructure, reconfigure and rearrange what is around us in an act of fluid architecture. This process roots a project in the place of its conception, and goes hand in hand with the idea of using available manpower. We believe in a collaborative effort between groups as a way of making space. Working on a personal level with the people that use architecture – rather than simply those who design it – allows everyone to have a go at making their ideal city into reality. With an emphasis on fast responses, a temporary installation is the natural expression of this. A benefit of this approach is a rejection of the idea of perfection found in longer term structures: temporary architecture allows for its participants to take more risks and express themselves more directly, without a need to distill ideas.

With our work locked into its space and time, the way we treat materials becomes another important factor in making our architecture. By using what already exists, it is possible to leave the smallest footprint possible, and by utilising pre-existing structures of renting, hiring, borrowing and sharing materials, umschichten fits into a open-source, responsive, multifunctional 21st century approach. Don’t hurt the material is a key phrase, we work with our own hands, trying to feel the materials’ weaknesses and strengths and to react to these in order to create work that is true to its context in every way.