"To describe the squatters'
alterations to Torre David as a slumification or ranchosis[1]
is both accurate and misleading.
Residents look backward, to their experiences of the barrios, in order to move
forwards, toward a normalized ideal drawn from middle-class standards.
Throughout the building, one sees a certain consistency in the use of materials
and application of methods in the common spaces and, to an extent, in each
family’s living area. But there is also considerable eclecticism, born of
individual ability, impulse towards experimentation, taste, and financial
resources. In general, the adaptive reuse of the building appears to be
evolving toward the “normal”, or formal, by means of a trial-and-error
informality. Thus construction in Torre David combines collective knowledge of
the self-built, incremental housing of the barrios with new techniques and
strategies that adapt this knowledge to the conditions of the Tower.
For
reasons of economy and custom, the most common choice of building material in
Torre David is red clay brick, used to construct houses in the barrios. This
gives the structures created but the residents the colour, texture, and
morphologies seen in the barrios. Red bricks are also used to demarcate private
space in Torre David, much as they are used in the barrios as a means of claiming
territory. Interestingly, one of the caraqueños who moves into Torre
David at the beginning of the current occupation was a brickmaker, who set up a
small shop where he took up his vocation. While other small entrepreneurial
efforts scattered through the building have succeeded, his, unfortunately did
not. It proved more costly for residents to purchase his bricks than to buy
them from the suppliers they had used in the barrios.
Some
creative adaptations and design interventions, initially experimental, have
proven successful. Breaking through walls that initially separated the building
in the complex has greatly improves circulation; the passageways connecting
Edificio K with the high-rise have been partially sealed with offset brick
walls on each floor, providing a modicum of privacy without losing crucial ventilation.
Some floors have painted these walls, using colour to give each “neighbourhood”
a local identity.
Other
interventions address a common issue using different methods and materials. To
improve security along stairs, hallways, and balconies, residents have employed
rebar, scavenged trusses, PVC pipes, and unmortared bricks, to varying degrees
of stability and durability. Recycling is both standard and, often, inventive."
Urban Think-Tank (2013) Torre David. Informal vertical communities. Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers. pp 208-209.
More on Torre David.
[1] “Ranchosis”
signifies a city dweller’s habit of mentally carrying the slum in one’s had and
reproducing it in one’s environment. For further information, see José Tomas
Sanabria, “ranchosis”, El Nacional
(Caracas), February 21, 2000, http://www.tomasjosesanabria.com/index.php?mod=paginas&id=13.
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