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Title: Torre David: Informal Vertical Communities
Authors: Urban-Think Tank
Publisher: Lars Müller
Year: 2012
ISBN: 9783037782989
Language: English

Description:
Torre David, a 45-story office tower in Caracas designed by the distinguished Venezuelan architect Enrique Gómez, was almost complete when it was abandoned following the death of its developer, David Brillembourg, in 1993 and the collapse of the Venezuelan economy in 1994. Today, it is the improvised home of a community of more than 750 families, living in an extra-legal and tenuous occupation that some have called a vertical slum.
Urban-Think Tank spent a year studying the physical and social organization of this ruin-become home.
Richly illustrated with photographs by Iwan Baan, the book documents the residents’ occupation of the tower and how, in the absence of formal infrastructure, they organize themselves to provide for daily needs.
Urban-Think Tank has conceived it as a laboratory for the study of the informal. In Torre David: Informal Vertical Communities, the architects lay out their vision for practical, sustainable interventions in Torre David and similar informal settlements around the world. They argue that the future of urban development lies in collaboration among architects, private enterprise, and the global population of slum-dwellers.

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Related: Towers