This article was originally published in Domus 965 / January 2013
Alfredo Brillembourg, Hubert
Klumpner, Urban-Think Tank, ETH Zürich,
Torre David
Lars Müller Publishers, Zürich 2012
(pp. 416; € 45,00)
MVRDV, The Why Factory,
The Vertical Village,
NAi Publishers, Amsterdam 2012
(pp. 528; € 35,00)
Sometime today inside Torre David, the notorious
unfinished skyscraper in Caracas, a family will
be taking a trip to the dentist, picking up laundry,
perhaps doing some shopping and maybe getting
a haircut; and they will be using semi-legal
electricity and water supplies. To do all this,
they will not need to leave the building, as these
functions occupy spaces in the once empty concrete
territory of speculative office development.
This
continuum of a type of normality, a community
life in the density of humanity, is at the centre
of an anthropological, sociological analysis of
Torre David by Venezuelan practice Urban-Think
Tank. Although their installation at the Venice
Biennale won them the Golden Lion, there was
consternation among the praise when, together
with photographer Iwan Baan and critic Justin
McGuirk, they recreated a restaurant from Torre
David in the Arsenale as a living exhibit. Some
accused the team of dabbling in misery tourism
by showcasing a slice of vivid charisma found
in the most desperate of circumstances. While
others were incredulous about the sheer existence
of the building and its informal community, in
Venezuela the project sparked a wave of political
embarrassment and fury.
Vertical and informal cities
Despite pursuing two opposing research directions, MVRDV and Urban-Think Tank both agree that the life of the city, no matter how complex and compromised, subsumes design.

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- Beatrice Galilee
- 08 February 2013

Urban-Think Tank's book Torre David. Informal Vertical Communities consciously attempts to navigate this uncertain and delicate terrain, refusing to romanticise and extracting facts, lives and ultimately lessons from an ecosystem of people who effectively exist as an exceptional yet inevitable community of the dispossessed.
The book is a product of rigorous,
obsessive observation and is richer and more
poignant as a result. Meanwhile, on the other side
of the planet, MVRDV and The Why Factory have
presented their vision for a new housing model in
Asian cities, curiously proposing the creation of
intimate communities within otherwise isolated
towers.
Despairing at the systematic destruction
of the historically low-rise, dense and informal
urban fabric of Beijing, Shanghai and Seoul in
favour of less effective and arguably less humane
skyscrapers, the architects conceived the Vertical
Village. Their solution is still a tower, but one in
which a community is intended to thrive, and
formulated with their idea to bring back "personal
autonomy, diversity, flexibility and neighbourhood
life to cities in Asia".
On the one hand, we have a
skyscraper—Torre David—that has seen the creation
of an informal community through economics,
poverty and opportunity. On the other, we find
architects who are proposing a carefully formulated
vertical village as the next great urban solution.
On the one hand, we have a skyscraper that has seen the creation of an informal community, on the other, a vertical village carefully formulated as the next great urban solution
Somewhat irksomely, Urban-Think Tank makes a cameo appearance in The Vertical Village, unveiling a thread of shared thoughts between the two quite opposing sets of research. The ambition to reintroduce village life into Asian cities is a farsighted, even urgent task while cities are being built and designed by developers with no significant architectural input and residents are fighting to stay in their communities.
In tracking the development of nine very distinct Asian cities, The Vertical Village presents a thorough study, but the techniques used by MVRDV to communicate their ideas do not appear to have evolved beyond their great back catalogue of critical volumes dating from the 1990s.
Both books add something to the existing piles of stories and narratives about the informal city and sprawling future cities. They are both wary of a future city in which architects have no authority, no expertise and barely any positive function.
In MVRDV's vision, the
village is something that can be imbedded in the
structure of a building at the design stage, but this
is still an expensive, developer-led and niche ideal
left to the discretion of developers. In Urban-Think
Tank's research, the application of architectural
thinking is a reaction to existing human conditions.
The life of the city, no matter how complex and
compromised, subsumes design. It seems that
the reality of exponential population growth is
reflected more compellingly in the latter.
Beatrice Galilee (@_Beatrice)