The High-Rise and The Shack: Rhizomatic Collisions In Caracas’ Torre David
The High-Rise and The Shack: Rhizomatic Collisions In Caracas’ Torre David
Loading...
Publication or External Link
Date
2020
Authors
Irazabal, Clara
Sosa, Irene
Schlenker, Lee Evan
Advisor
Citation
Irazábal, C., I. Sosa, and L. Schlenker. “The High-Rise and The Shack: Rhizomatic Collisions In Caracas’ Torre David.” ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies. 19(1): 1-34, 2020. https://www.acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1855
DRUM DOI
Abstract
A 45-story tower in Caracas formerly occupied by some 5,000 squatters, Torre
David was touted by international media accounts as the world’s most spectacular “vertical slum.” This, among other sensationalized accounts, failed to consider the
paradoxical ways in which Caracas’ formal and informal, urban and architectural
trajectories literally collided with each other in Torre David. The modern high-rise
and the self-built shack—antagonist spatial typologies in Caracas’ growth—were
dramatically superposed in the tower, unleashing hitherto un(fore)seen dynamics.
Through site fieldwork, interviews, film production, media analysis, and historical
research, we offer a nuanced theorization of Torre David that grapples with its
charged tensions between the formal and informal, modern and traditional,
modernity and postmodernity, reality and imagination, and capitalism and
socialism. We begin our investigation with a historical account of the tower’s
construction, abandonment, and ultimate occupation. This is followed by a
theoretical positioning of Torre David as a social and physical space ‘in-between’.
Ultimately, we argue that these tensions created a rhizomatic socio-spatial field
heavily pregnant with both risks and hopes for the people, the government, and the
spatial disciplines.