Desitecture, a British Architecture Collective, have recently been shortlisted by the World Architecture Festival in the future project-experimental category for their Vertical City in Venezuela. More images and architect’s description after the break.
Originally 23 de Enero was designed to become a mass housing block for residents of the city to live and work in. On January 23rd, 1958, when the dictator President Jimenez was ousted following a military coup, masses of homeless and lower class citizens flooded into the tower and it has since become known as 23 de Enero.
To cope with the threat of eviction, the residents became more organised and networks of exchange and communication formed within the towers which became self contained micro communities.
The social imperative – without ownership the disenfranchised poor cannot hope to bequeath a viable inherited financial future to the next generation, their children. In order that they are able to have a capital stake in the exiting societal construct they must have ownership of the land on which they live, to this end the tower acts as a catalyst for the creation of ownership. As the land on which the tower is constructed, is that of the barrio, this gives value to previously worthless land. The stakeholders now have options either to move out of the favela and reside in a new unit within the tower in its emerging micro economic community whilst deriving an income from their share in the land development or to relocate altogether, somewhere new. Although this would have the effect of breaking up the established community, it could open up new social and economic connections.
The reclaimed land and would now become available for commercial /intensive agricultural development and would a new enhanced economic value, thus providing a legacy for the re located former inhabitants. The tower releases land, provides work and acts as a negotiator for an engagement with capital. The city gains a new quarter providing fresh produce and enhanced transport links and facilities, to a new economic zone.
The social identity
The three cups, define distinct user groups and activities, which are nonetheless related, typically they could contain college level activity, university and research / knowledge economy business; or retail, hotel, apartments; or social housing, local administration and offices .In whichever configuration, the tower is a metaphor for true urban living, having all the elements of work, leisure , home and a sense of place in one entity, Access to and from the tower takes many forms, cable car, helicopter, water taxi car or metro.
Bars, café’s and restaurants should flourish in such a climate, taking as their cue many roof / mountain top venues. The tower, it is hoped, will become a destination in its own right with 24 hr zones of activity; and as such develop a more open culture, and therefore, always be in flux, perhaps even a transient culture, a place to experience.
Structure
The 180 storey tower’s structure bears a strong relationship to the folded spoon analogy, with the bowl being the elliptical lagoon, and the shaft and vertical legs supporting the cups .The tower appears to be a twisting cantilever, but is in fact a simple structure, with only the top cup having a cantilevered element. The main support are the vertical and diagonal structural frame containing circulation and services this runs through all the cups and in the first forty five storey’s supports the palette shaped overlapping gardens and city farms. Beneath the tower are four levels of vehicular access and parking covering an expansive area, which incorporates the piled structural legs and the diagonal main composite core, and grows into the structure of the lagoon, acting as a stabilizing counterweight to the tower .The inner structure of the cups is a diagonal structural grid into which the wheatsheaf pattern of woven individual units is embedded.
The Form
The form of the tower is derived from an inverse of the tower of babel prototype, which is typified by a dense pyramidal structure, instead we have utilized notions of light, air, openness and freedom as the source for a series of aerial streets and courtyards, allowing for the development of distinct lifestyle patterns and communities.
The ellipse favours this approach, the shape allows for four distinct experiential zones, which can be broken down to a local level of organization and inhabitation. The form also minimizes the side effects of wind turbulence often associated with tall buildings.
Construction
The legs / vertical support structure contain elevators and staircases and are linked by structured palette shaped platforms which provide aerial gardens and parks. These parks are also farming units providing an all year round source of food and leisure. each cup has its own external facing park, and internal bridges allow easy access across the inner aerial spaces. Large openings allow additional light into these inner spaces, whilst their hollow nature provides a naturally ventilated core.
Micro climate
The internal elliptical areas provide , distinct micro climates , within each cup, they will each acquire their own character in terms of vegetation and aerial wildlife, supported by balcony gardens and green loading elements which will accrue over time.
Skin
The external elements are of a lightweight composite, precast units contain a hollow structure based on coral which has embedded micro turbines, these make the skin into a wind energy generating surface providing power to augment photovoltaic panel solar collection. Within the inner skin the effect is enhanced as natural convection assists the production of energy.
Night
The building will appear to hover above the landscape creating a breathtaking spectacle in the night sky, it offset elements seeming to be in motion, and offering its users unparalleled views, and a chance to dream.
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Do you have something to smoke?
how ?
If it would be possible, the cantilever would be impressive; however aesthetically this building looks revolting.
This is suppose to be low-income housing? Am I missing something? Is this another one of Chavez’s crazy ideas? The guy’s loco man.
I really dont see the point in social housing being so expensive, it’s not exactly space efficient, and there seems no need for such a huge canterlever in the first place
fly high
I don’t get it. What does 23 de Enero have to do with this?
Is the idea that the poor, living in the bario, evacuate their homes so that this thing can be built, and then they get to move in, if they want? Really?
Why do people insist on these kinds of token social narratives?
Every one of the images is screaming luxury and status. It’s a typical dubai-developer-slash-save-the-planet-fantasy-tower.
Setting it up as some kind of socio-economic reparation project is grossly naive.
cómo se cuzquean!
Jeez! I don’t know what’s funnier – the building itself or the fact that it is proposed in Venezuela. Don’t these guys read the news? Venezuela is about to crumble. But you know what? If sent to Chavez, perhaps he’ll even think this is the future and Bolivar’s dream and the building might get a shot, jaja.
it isn’t even visually pleasing…
why over-speculate with a project in a country with so many necessities and social problems?
the amount of work that went into this poor idea and project could have been spent trying to understand and attempt to propose something worth spending time on!
what a waste of energy, resources and time…
Come on guys.
This is Chavez latest economic upturn. Caracas will be competing with Dubai. On January 23rd, this infamous dictator extended an open competition/invitation to all starchitects or wannabe starchitects eager for a shot to start creating “amazing” or “impossible to conceive” and or Babel type of architecture able to speculate with what could be called new totalitarian surrealist progressive revolutionary architecture…Why not what does it take to dressa poor individual and place it into a 5 start hotel type of setting just a couple of overprice barrels of OIL.
War of the Worlds.
This worries me.
voronoi interior wall…. really??
I’m really interested in this particular design decision…. there’s no point really arguing with the rest of it.
crazy
Why….
if this ever becomes a reality i am emigrating to another planet!
I tend to see socialy concerned practice of architecture in a rather different way than this…
Gravity this is Vertical City, Vertical City this is gravity, why don’t you too get acquainted…
Lol! just what I was thinking…!
Or else, dig the foundation ’til Australia!
Dear God. If anything, it should become a mental institution… for the architects designing this to be put away in.
wrong wrong, like so many things we see now a days. How is it possible that so many architects cynically kneel to clients-
projects that are an hypocresy in essence between the objective and the way this clients are in fact part of the distortion we live in now a days. They become rich with a black poison of wich we are adict. Where is the common sense that gave birth to the modern movement, the reinterpretation of the destructive industrialization, to an humanization for social purposes.
Beyond the failures and triunphs, the purpose was good, it is time to reconsider urgently the direction of efforts toward one collective objective.
1. as Tyler mentioned, i also do not get the idea of this design, which should be situated in venezuela.
2. for me it seams, that the tower will fall down every second. if not, you have to spent millions for the construction. Even the tower would not fall down, i do also not understand why it has to be so crazy in construction.
3. i ask myself how the floor plans will be working. normally here must be a corridor in the middle, means: half of the apartments or hotel rooms or whatever looking to the inside and this make no sense for me by having such a tall tower.
Or do we have here a “le corbusier” floorplan? If yes, how this can be working with the lifts and staircases?
4. Staircase and lifts: do not understand this system here.
5. Proposition: out of any human scale as the images shows already.
Isn’t it lucky that buildings don’t cast shadows in virtual space…
i’m gonna go ahead and state the obvious.
it would fall down.
“The tower appears to be a twisting cantilever, but is in fact a simple structure, with only the top cup having a cantilevered element.”
Umm… I would say that the middle cup also has a cantilevered element, or am I missing something? The statement that the structure “…is in fact a simple structure…” is as true as pigs can fly. I’m not saying it’s impossible but it’s certainly not a simple structure. The structure will raise the building costs and the result will not be affordable social housing, if that even was the idea in the first place, which I doubt.
Anybody know that “El 23 de enero” it’s in sismic zone #6
I’m all for working pro-bono on projects aimed to focus on social issues on critical contexts… but this proposal is naive in so many ways! It appears like the collective never sat a foot in the site they’re so blatantly exploiting. For illustration, I’ll just point out a few simple facts:
- ’23 de Enero’ isn’t a block or a tower. It’s a whole district composed of more than a dozen 15 stories’ high, Corbusier-like megablocks, among which a ‘favela’ has developed for over 50 years. Things aren’t so simple as you put it in that real-state utopia.
– It lies in a rather steep hill. Actually, there almost aren’t any levelled grounds in Caracas at all… and you come up with a lake?!
- Caracas stands on a active seismic region. Need I say more?
- Socially, it’s a disaster. 23 de Enero is an already isolated community, with few access points and through which no outsiders attempt to ever pass. Crime still holds a major portion of the power inside. If such idea could ever be implemented, the stablished powers on the leading criminal residents would increase to the level of landlords, turning those pristine, luxurious Dubai-like renders more into post-apocalyptic visions of a feudal domain (imagine ‘City of God’ meets ‘Mad Max’, in a ‘Die Hard’ environment).
we all know that we don’t have to take this too serious :–)
word.
Hey guys, don’t shortsell Desitecture – they have other GREAT projects!
Like this one: http://www.desitecture.com/pages/shed.htm