I was looking through different articles about design on Good and I found this one about old grain silos (which if you don't know what a silo is, it's a large structure used to store bulks of product, like grains) that was transformed into affordable student housing in Johannesburg by using recycled shipping crates http://dzinetrip.com/old-silos-johannesburg-converted-student-housing/ I had never before heard of housing built with shipping crates and then I started finding more articles about other places that are using them! (like this one http://dzinetrip.com/container-housing-complex-in-canada-by-atira/)
This got me thinking about alternative housing solutions. What would happen if this affordable housing option was not just offered to students? Would that change the dynamics of the housing complex? What other needs might need to be addressed? How might neighbors and businesses in the area react?
Some time ago I saw a trailer for a documentary on Torre de David in Caracas, Venezuela. Torre de David is a skyscraper in downtown Caracas that was never completed and has been vacant for over a decade. Since then over 2,500 people have occupied the entire building and transformed it into their home, turning what was once meant to be a banking center, into an informal vertical community.
It is incredible to think of the solutions that people will create in order to survive! I also wonder what are the differences between a non-vertical/horizontal informal community and a vertical one? What pops into my mind right now is that horizontal informal communities are found on the edges, borders, being pushed out and simultaneously trying to stay put. Whereas this vertical community is found in the center, disrupting the order of the city's downtown, and the realities of the families living in this community can't be easily ignored.
This is an article that The Guardian published last month with photos of Torre de David http://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/feb/12/la-torre-david-vertical-slum-caracas-venezuela-tower and this is a short video tour of the tower by the Washington Post last summer...
Enjoy!
this is amazing. the notion of an abandoned skyscraper becoming a vertical community in this regard and depositing families of less means in the city center sounds fascinating. does the government have an opinion on this? do the families worry about losing the spaces they've settled in? wow.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing, it is very intriguing and interesting how resourceful we can be using found objects. When I lived in San Francisco a fellow artist friend of mine named Joe Sam., was involved with similar projects using found objects and recycled items to create temporary shelter for the homeless. I am not sure if this would work in Chicago during the winter because of our extreme cold and harsh winter conditions, but in northern California it was a temporary and very much needed alternative short term fix :-)
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