«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-turned-home. Where some only see a failed development project, U-TT has conceived it as a laboratory for the study of the informal. In their “Torre David / Grand Horizonte” exhibit and in their forthcoming book, 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. This film is a call to arms to architects and everyone--to see in the informal settlements of the world a potential for innovation and experimentation, with the goal of putting design in the service of a more equitable and sustainable future.»
The Golden Lion award at the 2012 Venice Architectural Biennale it's been very critizided... I think it depends on how you focus it: who has really been awarded? what are really awarding? Does the award categorize Torre David as an architectural project or as a social project? Does it point to an actual problem it needs serious attention or it just some other fashionable architecture project to pack and sell in a book?... Or maybe the way to exhibit it as Gran Horizon restaurant installation in Venice has trivialized the slum dwellers' lives... for the glory of the 'artists'? There are always two sides to every story...
This is one side... the justification of Justin McGuirK: