Hubert Klumpner is a bohemian who makes use of intelligence, literature and architecture as tools targeting cities around the world. He is also an experimental observer watching and plotting occasion and occurrence together. Once upon a time, this bohemian experimentalist drifted ashore to Caracas as a perfect laboratory. On one hand, industrialization and urbanization in the 20th century gave birth to several megalopolises, and on the other hand created a chronic mismatch between overpopulation in cities and a velocity of economic growth generating social problems like slums and lack of public service. Klumpner is thinking about cities not as the subject for relief and control, but as an 'informal' force; drifting and experimenting while responding to these forces based in Caracas as his home.
Why did you select this city to live and work?
After studying with my partner, Alfredo Brillemourg, at Columbia University in New York, we traveled extensively through Latin America, and Caracas became for us one of the perfect laboratories for us to study the informal city as one of the most interesting urban forms of the 20th century.
Could you tell us your connection between architecture and design; as well as, the connection between think tank and design?
We've found that the informal city neither lacks form or design. It is actually a design powerhouse. We are learning from there, and trying to moderate, and connect the pieces that we find. So for us design can be found everywhere, and solutions that result out of urgent situations or extreme conditions, are maybe the more interesting ones we can find today. As Einstein already said, inventions only make sense if they make the world better. It's a very good example of what we are looking for in design, in Caracas, and the informal city.
What do you mean by informal city?
Informal city is not detached from what we generally understand as a modernist city, or a traditionally built city, but is a part that has always resisted the formal codes that have been imposed by governments. We believe that in the future, cities will be built by much more individual movements rather than by big organized city governments. City governments will reduce their interventions, and individually built cities will meet the needs of a bigger and larger part of humanity. We believe this will be the model for the 21st century in the future.