For those of you who are in or around the US Capital city- Washington DC- I will be moderating a talk with Urban Think Tank’s Alfredo Brillembourg on the documentary Torre David, the 45-story office tower in Caracas turned “vertical slum”, on May 22nd.
The tower, built as the headquarters of the Confinanzas Group in the early 90s ,was left unfinished after the company went bankrupt in 1994. Since the year 2000, already neglected and decaying, the tower began to be taken-over and slowly inhabited by more than 700 families. it was stated that by 2007, the tower had over 2,500 people living in it.
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/torredavid
The documentary and accompanying installation gained the golden Lyon award at the 2012 Biennale.
A couple of our FAVELissues writers have reported a bit on this:
Vertical Sites and Services (by Bethany Oppaluck)
Venice and why we should be sad (by Arqui 5)
If you are in the area, please join us as we screen the documentary and discuss the current situation of the tower, its inhabitants, as well as the accompanying work UTT has done in this regards, in the context of urban informality and urban development.
Monday May 22 from 6-45 to 9PM, @ Dupont Underground (1500 19th Street NW
Washington, DC …underground!!).
For more info, click HERE
{FAVEL issues} 
now that for the third time this week i’ve heard separately from friends who were in the DC screening I thought i would chime in,
as i strongly disagree with A.B. and UTT’s ways…
I dont believe brillembourg, or anyone, should be utilizing Venezuela’s current spotlight to promote his office or personal interests.
Tired, with much fill-in and badly edited i found the video and sadly i learned nothing more than Iwan Baan’s pictures had already told in much more spectacular fashion.
Bigger names, or shall we say, some of the the biggest, such as Alcock and Tenreiro already given their opinion on the miserable collab between UTT and MinPPPBCultura in Venice. For myself I would add that your proposals or solutions in this “project”, as you say you consider Torre David to be, were scarce or very hard to find. The study makes for nice graphics.. you guys have discovered Vertically Integrated mixed use.. similar to the nearby -and half a century old PArque Central, as an interviewed lady points out, but in a much more interesting anarchic and illegal way.
For the most affected party, the removed illegal ocuppants, they are probably worse off now a day.
Otherwise I believe AB should never speak again of the Metrocable.. a swindle that costed the nation more than TEN times that of medellin’s cable system. Take into consideration Medellin’s was longer and steeper. As for the whole architectonic program additional to the mere tranportational aspect in San Agustin, it is completely unbuilt and thus render those nice concept schemes you published in Domus and in your site completely out of touch with reality.
least important of all, MAybe you should address the problem the Pinto bros. will have with you claiming authorship on Vertical Gyms?.. or in a more recent turn of events, Aravena and Elemental’s main ideas being transported to South Africa with no trace of acknowledgement?