TORRE DAVID

Urban-Think Tank; Caracas, Venezuela
2012, 2 min 02 sec

Torre David, a 45-story office tower in Caracas designed by the distinguished Venezuelan architect Enrique Gómez, was almost complete when it was abandoned following the death of its developer, David Brillembourg, in 1993 and the collapse of the Venezuelan economy in 1994. Today, it is the improvised home of a community of more than 750 families, living in an extra-legal and tenuous occupation that some have called a vertical slum.

Urban-Think Tank, spent a year studying the physical and social organization of this ruin-turned-home. Where some only see a failed development project, U-TT has conceived it as a laboratory for the study of the informal. In their Torre David / Grand Horizonte exhibit and in their forthcoming book Torre David: Informal Vertical Communities the architects lay out their vision for practical and sustainable interventions in Torre David and similar informal settlements around the world. They argue that the future of urban development lies in collaboration among architects, private enterprise, and the global population of slum-dwellers. This film is a call to arms to architects and everyone – to see in the informal settlements of the world a potential for innovation and experimentation, with the goal of putting design in the service of a more equitable and sustainable future.

ARCHITECTURE WITHOUT ARCHITECTS

Justin McQuirk, Deezen Studio; Venice, Italy
2012, 2 min 03 sec

What can happen to an abandoned inner city office tower? 750 families can move in and live there. In Caracas, Torre David was standing at 45 stories, almost finished, when the project was left in its incomplete form following the death of its developer in 1993 and the collapse of the Venezuelan economy in 1994.

“The Torre David was meant to be a gleamy office tower. Now it’s a sky-high squat. With no elevators. For all its improvisatory resourcefulness, the settlement represents a massive failure of civic society. After all, the government could choose at any time to make the building habitable and safe. Meanwhile, the skyscraper is a modern ruin buzzing with life, a post-apocalyptic mockery of an oil-rich nation’s aspirations.”, says Iwan Baan.

MATT COOLIDGE: LANDSCAPE LITERACY

The Center for Land Use Interpretation
2008, 3 min 56 sec

The Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI) is a research organization established in 1994 in Culver City, Los Angeles by Matthew Coolidge, examining the relationships between the physical landscape and its human occupation, taking on the role of the impartial expert relating an ‘objective’ view, a wry stance that allows them to highlight the problematic relationships between the economy and land-use and their impacts on the environment.

This is carried out through an investigation into different land uses, their ownership, and the economic and cultural value associated with parts of the landscape. CLUI raise awareness and stimulate debate about the physical landscape, from vast working factories to abandoned military facilities or sewage treatment works and waste incinerators. Their research uncovers the variety of unusual and often environmentally catastrophic uses that support the lifestyle that we are used to in developed countries.

IN THE OPEN: ART & ARCHITECTURE IN PUBLIC SPACES

Deborah Gans and Matthew Coolidge; BOMBLive!
2010, 4 min 25 sec

Deborah Gans Studio is devoted to re-thinking how architecture can participate in the invention of new social forms, often by focusing on extreme situations that yield insights for everyday life.

Matthew Coolidge is a founder and director of the Center for Land Use Interpretation, an organization dedicated to improving the collective understanding about humans and the landscapes that they inhabit.

Part of the BOMBLive! series In the Open: Art and Architecture in Public Spaces, sponsored by Cary-Brown Epstein, Steven Epstein, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

TRANSITION TOWN: WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT

Apple & Eye-Filmpromotion
2010, 8 min 17 sec

What is Transition? Rob Hopkins leads a vibrant new movement of towns and cities that utilize local cooperation and interdependence to shrink their ecological footprints. In the face of climate change he developed the concept of Transition Initiatives — communities that produce their own goods and services, curb the need for transportation and take other measures to prepare for a post-oil future. While Transition shares certain principles with greenness and sustainability, it is a deeper vision concerned with re-imagining our future in a self-sufficient way and building resiliency.

IN TRANSITION 1.0

www.transitionnetwork.org; USA
2009, 23 min 30 sec

In Transition is the first detailed film about the Transition movement filmed by those that know it best, those who are making it happen on the ground. The Transition movement is about communities around the world responding to peak oil and climate change with creativity, imagination, humour and setting about rebuilding their local economies and communities.

In the film you’ll see stories of communities creating their own local currencies, setting up their own pubs, planting trees, growing food, celebrating localness, neighbours sharing their land with neighbours that have none, local authorities getting behind their local Transition initiatives, schoolchildren making news in 2030 and so on. The film gives a sense of the scale of this emerging movement. It is a story of hope and a call for action.

DAVID JOHNSON & JIM NEWCOMER ABOUT THE TRANSITION TOWNS MOVEMENT:
NOT WAITING FOR LEADERS

Sustainable Today; Portland, USA
2009, 10 min 24 sec

The Transition Town movement, which originated in the UK, is spreading around the world. Meet David Johnson, who worked closely with Transition Town Handbook founder Rob Hopkins, and Jim Newcomer who is organizing locally in Portland, Oregon.

What is all this about? How does a town get started? It begins with the premise that we will have to make do with considerably less cheap fossil fuel energy in the future. The issue is too overwhelming for any one body of government or leadership of any kind to deal with. It is going to require the creativity, input and co-operation of many in the community, and the time to start coordinating efforts is NOW.

SUE MORRISON & CLARE POWER TALK ABOUT TRANSITION TOWNS

Bathurst Community Climate Action Network; Bathurst, Australia
2010, 6 min 32 sec

Clare Power [Blue Mountains Transition] and Sue Morrison [Climate Action Now, Katoomba] visited Bathurst in central New South Wales, Australia. They were in town to attend a public meeting organised by Bathurst Community Climate Action Network (BCCAN) where the movie In Transition was shown. Before the meeting, Clare and Sue described the origins and aims of the Transition Town movement.

WHAT MAKES AN ECOVILLAGE?

Liz Walker of Ecovillage, Frequency555.com; Ithaca, USA
2010, 9 min 49 sec

Liz Walker describes in the interview the ways in which Ecovillage at Ithaca entails a working model of the five following main aspects.

1. Green Building

Ecovillage at Ithaca features clustered housing units, which allows for considerable land conservation when developing. The community managed to fit 30 homes into each acre of land. The ecovillage also utilizes passive solar design in their buildings’ construction to help regulate internal temperature throughout the year. Passive solar generally involves facing the windows of a building to the south to allow as much sunlight in as possible (buildings in the southern hemisphere below the equator would face north instead). An overhand is built over each window in such a way in the summer months, no direct sunlight enters the windows since the sun is higher in the sky. However, during winter months, the sun is lower in the sky and the sunlight enters directly into the house. The buildings are also super-insulating, and retain the heat that is absorbed. The result is a home that costs considerably less to heat and cool throughout the year.

2. Alternative Energy

As expected, Ecovillage at Ithaca incorporates solar and wind energy into their community design, and all the roofs in the community are specifically designed to support solar panels. They also use solar hot water heaters and are in the process of creating a system which connects the solar heated water throughout the entire community.

3. Local Food Production

Considering all the land Ecovillage at Ithaca saved by using a clustered housing model, they have created large organic gardens and even a garden solely dedicated to seasonal berries. Their gardens feed roughly 1000 people per week in the ecovillage and the city of Ithaca.

4. A Strong Sense of Community

Ecovillage at Ithica is an intergenerational community, meaning that there are people of all ages living there. They share several meals a week in the community building dining hall and the clustered housing design encourages people to actually take the time to get to know their neighbors. As Liz says in her interview, what is created is a sense of extended family.

5. Education

Ecovillage at Ithaca has an educational non-profit which conducts seminars and holds workshops explaining the ecovillage lifestyle. They also have University backed work-exchange programs, where students can earn credit for working on the community’s organic farm. There is even a member of the ecovillage who started a sustainability-focused high school in the city of Ithaca called New Roots School to impart the concepts familiar to ecovillage life.

While this interpretation of what an Ecovillage is is just one woman’s opinion, it rings true to ecovillage modality, and I for one find Liz’s five points to be integral to truly creating an ecovillage. While Ecovillage at Ithica is still a work in progress (as are all ecovillages), it is an exceptional model of what could be achieved as the world moves toward a more sustainable model of development.

LIFE IN ECOVILLAGE

Russia Today; Rodnoe, Russia
2007, 4 min 09 sec

As the world wakes up to the affects of climate change, more and more Russians are ditching city life for some fresh country air. They are taking the usual ‘dacha’ living one step further by living off the land all year round.