Antonia Cruel

Antonia Cruel graduated with a Master of Arts degree from the TU Munich, having studied architecture there and at ETH Zurich for the past few years. Her architectural focus shifted to the social responsibility of architecture at the latest after her year abroad and the collaboration with the Urban Think Tank. With the latter, Antonia designed infrastructural solutions in squatted urban settlements as part of various interdisciplinary architectural projects. They have designed solutions for lighting and water infrastructure in squeezed neighborhoods in Colombia with local partners, and developed ideas to provide housing and employment for a site in Johannesburg.

Since then, architecture without socially relevant added value has been inconceivable to Antonia, although beyond the implications for climate change, architecture must meet diverse site-specific requirements.

Antonia founded the initiative „Inzwischen München“, which aims to inform about the potential of built space resources. Since then, she sees herself as a lobbyist for intelligent multiple use of buildings.

In our place, the greatest challenge may be to provide enough affordable housing in cities. Antonia’s TEDxTalk will relate the problems of housing shortage and climate change and how we might solve them by using the built space around us.