The Top 100 NGOs 2013. - Akshaya Patra

TIPPING THE URBAN FABRIC
torre david: inforMal
vertical coMMUnitieS
urBan-Think Tank
lars müller PuBlishers
€45.00
The third tallest building in Venezuela
stands proudly in the heart of Caracas’
former central business district,
Libertador. Originally conceived as a
landmark commercial development,
construction was abandoned in the
wake of a national banking crisis in
1994, and the postmodern skyscraper –
now known as ‘Torre David’ – became
a magnet for squatters. A building in
a constant state of resident-generated
flux, at last count it served as home to
more than 750 families living in a selforganized
“vertical slum.”
In Torre David, Zurich-based
interdisciplinary design firm, Urban-
Think Tank, in collaboration with
noted architectural photographer
Iwan Baan, have produced a vividly
The gloBal review + illusTraTeD Books The gloBal review + illusTraTeD Books
illustrated paean to a fascinating – and
ongoing – informal urban experiment.
The book’s austere opening images
presage an improvised community built
amidst soaring concrete and industrial
residue – perched precariously above
a sea of urban sprawl beating back
the vegetation cascading down from
surrounding valleys.
Progress further into the book, however,
and one is drawn instead to what is not
immediately evident from a perspective
framed by external structures and
architectural cross sections – the
remarkable social life at the heart of
an evolving occupancy. In claiming
Torre David as their own, its residents
have transformed the building’s sense
of possibility. Despite an absence of
The gloBal Journal + January & FeBruary 2013
elevators, electrical infrastructure,
running water and windows, shops,
services and sporting facilities have
emerged alongside work-in-progress
living spaces through an organic process
of bottom-up urbanism.
Most evocative are a series of in situ
family portraits, capturing the myriad
ways in which those seeking refuge
from the chaotic forces shaping the
city beyond have sought to transform
their corner of a skeletal commercial
ruin into a space fit to host the richness
of everyday life. In the proud faces
of those living amidst even the most
rudimentary conditions, one finds a
common sense of humanity.
- AK
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