Aziza Chaouni will hold a seminar on Fez at Columbia University GSAPP for a SlumLab Studio on February 5, 2009. She is collaborating with SLUMLAB (Sustainable Living Urban Model Lab) on their current studio this term. The lab’s focus is to identify and develop architectural technologies for the informal city - spatial, material and informational.

The studio is taught by Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner (Urban-Think Tank) with Mark Collins and Toru Hasegawa (Slum Lab Technology).

SLUMLAB History
The Slumlab is a unique lab that works as a nomadic enterprise; bringing planners, architects, and students from all areas of the globe to converge and to work towards an understanding of the link between urban planning and poverty alleviation. Using Urban Think Tank, an already established architecture firm as its catalyst, architects Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner are seeking to expand the role of the politically engaged architect in areas of slum upgrading. The SLUM LAB hopes to stage an exploration of the intersection between social/political and environmental activism to come up with the notion of a collective territory, and also a territory of collaboration that transgresses hemispheric boundaries.

The Utrecht Manifest organization in Holland is sponsoring a studio in Utrecht  in order to extend the frontiers of knowledge on learning about  Hoograven a Moroccan neighborhood in Holland and from Fez Morocco to create the intellectual, organizational, and physical infrastructure needed for the long-term community integration. The Learning from Informal and Formal Environments (LIFE) is the first Urban Think Tank studio to be sponsored in Europe. LIFE is an interdisciplinary collaboration between architects, housing corporations of Holland and  Utrecht City Mayor.