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Torre David is an incomplete skyscraper in the center of the
Venezuelan capital Caracas that has been occupied and reconstructed
by local residents. Work on the building, named after the financial
investor David Brillembourg, who died in 1993, was suspended during
the Venezuelan financial crisis of 1994. After the office tower--
the third highest in Venezuela--had stood empty for many years, it
was taken over by the local population in 2008. The occupants made
the building their own with improvisation and skill--it is a
"vertical favela," now containing not just housing but also other
everyday facilities such as an improvised doctor's office, shops,
and more. Photographer Iwan Baan has documented Torre David and its
occupants, creating a portrait that captures the contradictions of
the place while at the same time revealing urban structures that
have emerged dynamically and without planning. Alfredo Brillembou
rg was born in New York in 1961. In 1993 he founded Urban-Think
Tank in Caracas, Venezuela. Since May 2010, Brillembourg holds a
chair in architecture and urban design at the Swiss Institute of
Technology, Zurich. Hubert Klumpne r was born in Salzburg in 1965.
In 1998 he joined Alfredo Brillembourg as director of Urban-Think
Tank in Caracas. Since 2010, Klumpner holds a chair in architecture
and urban design at the Swiss Institute of Technology, Zurich. Iwan
Baan, born in Alkmaar, Netherlands, in 1975, is an architecture and
documentary photographer. His photographs feature regularly in such
journals as Domus, A+U, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and
others."
Urban-Think Tank (U-TT), an interdisciplinary design practice emerging from the turbulent political environment of Chávez-era Caracas, has pursued projects in Latin America, Europe, and Africa for almost twenty years. Their diverse work positioned the rm at the forefront of a social turn in architecture in the late 1990s, with concrete urban interventions encouraging social cohesion in the megacities of the Global South and Europe’s evolving metropoles. U-TT has also produced numerous media projects that harness lm, theater, exhibitions, and print to create new discursive spaces and question how our cities are shaped, and for whom. Most notable is its work on the squatted skyscraper for which the rm shared the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2012. This book looks forward as well as back, imagining new spaces for a hyper-urbanized world and gaining insight from informal settlements, spatial play, and artistic interventions in public space.
Parangole is an annual, independent journal that challenges ideas
on urbanization, design and architecture by initiating a global
dialogue on topics such as mobility, migration, fluidity and
multiplicity. The journal expands on the cultural, social and
political significance of what it means to live in the city. The
title of the magazine pays homage to the work of Brazilian artist
Helio Oiticica, extending his central tenet that "life is movement"
from the body to the city. The first issue of Parangole, titled
Motherland, focuses on the space of habitation for those who live
in precarious and transitory conditions due to economic hardship,
conflict, and violence. People on the move face unique challenges
and vulnerabilities that must be identified and addressed in urban
settings. With Motherland, researchers and practitioners are
brought together to think about these issues and their solutions.
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