UNStudio’s Marianthi Tatari Explores Human-Centered Smart Cities in reSite Podcast

Written by Christele Harrouk
Published on March 16, 2020

Design and the City is a podcast by reSITE, raising questions and proposing solutions for the city of the future. In the sixth episode, Marianthi Tatari, Associate Director and Senior Architect at UNStudio, talks about creating inclusive spaces to connect people and generating 24/7 activity within their projects.

+ 4

Avoiding mono functionality, UNStudio, founded by Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos, aims to always create cities for everyone and encourage diversity. With a human-centered approach, the knowledge-driven architecture and design practice addresses the notion of place in various scales and typologies. Marianthi Tatari, Greek of origin, works with the studio in their headquarters in Amsterdam. Associate director at the office, she is in charge of a couple of projects. With an optimistic take on design and the world of today, she addresses the pressing issues through holistic solutions across all scales. In fact, she states that “architects, designers, urban planners need to engage with innovative clients, city officials, experts to create real-life integral solutions to what is challenging our built environment”.

Discussing their architectural ventures, Tatari affirms that over a period of 30 years, the most important projects for the firm were the Erasmus Bridge, the Arnhem station, and the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart. Recently, UNStudio just finished the Doha metro and is working on the headquarters of Booking.com in Amsterdam.

UNStudio’s changing approach to architecture and design is all about integrating new aspects of city-building. Tatari explains that “we don't only design buildings but we create nodes out of research out of designs. We have a couple of platforms within the office that work at the same time as we architects are working and we have no lids platform that test product processes and tries to actually help the studio but also create new leads through collaborations”. Actually, with UN Studio Futures, the firm looks at future trends, informing architects on how to make better projects. With UNSense, an arch-tech company, the firm researches technology, social impact, and human-centered cities.

Finally, discussing smart cities, Tatari presents the firm’s position on having people actively participate in the discussion. Through integrating technology and having their resources managed, people can actually gain from participating in a community. In fact, she states that “by creating a wealth of participation, you can continue a discussion”. Their approach focuses primarily on 100 homes, where the studio can test and learn before engaging with a whole big project.

ReSITE, a global non-profit acting to improve the urban environment, launched its first podcast, Design and the City, featuring nine speakers from the reSITE 2019 REGENERATE event. Revolving around how we can use design to make cities more livable and lovable, every week, a new episode is released, featuring a new guest.