Join us for a Reading Session on ‘Torre David: Informal Vertical Communities’ with Sebastián Trujillo-Torres at Arthshila Ahmedabad on Saturday, 18 March 2023 at 11.30 am.

During this reading session, participants will engage with selected excerpts of the book as a way to shed light on the narratives behind Torre David, and the most significant takeaways from the study. The aim is to invite debate on the characteristic features of Global South urbanisms, the potential of migrating knowledge across specific contexts and cultures, and critically observing the Latin American historical experience from within the Indian situation. The focus of the discussion will be set around topics of informality, self-organisation, and the role of designers in conditions of what Jeffrey Hou calls “messy urbanisms”.

About the Book:

Urban-Think Tank, the authors of Torre David: Informal Vertical Communities, spent a year studying the physical and social organization of Torre David, a 45-story skyscraper in Caracas that remained uncompleted since the Venezuelan economy collapsed in 1994. Richly illustrated with photographs by Iwan Baan, the book documents the residents’ occupation of the tower and how, in the absence of formal infrastructure, they organize themselves to provide for daily needs, with a hair salon, a gym, grocery shops, and more.

About Sebastián Trujillo-Torres:

Sebastián is a spatial designer, researcher, and lecturer working between Colombia and India. He is the co-founder of Chaal.Chaal.Agency; a design-research collaborative project with international recognition that specializes in experimental infrastructures, community engagement processes, and public pedagogy. Aside from authoring ‘La Cuarta Geografía: Arquitectura Colombiana fuera de Colombia’, as well as other essays published in different journals, he was a recipient of the 2022 DXD-Sanskruti Fellowship and is currently the programme coordinator for the CEPT Master Class Programme.