The sixth issue of SLUM Lab is the first to have a global scope, presenting an array of projects from around the world that reveal facets of the destructive capacity of contemporary city-making and ideas for alternative futures. Produced as a free newspaper bringing together studio material or directed projects from Columbia University GSAPP, the City College of New York’s landscape architecture program, and ETH Zürich, as well as invited essays, the publication was launched during New York’s Urban Design Week and includes contributions from Charlie Koolhaas, Michael Sorkin, SUPERFRONT, Lydia Kallipoliti, Michael Young, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Interboro Partners, and David Grahame Shane.

The São Paulo Architecture Experiment documents a collaboration between the São Paulo State Housing Secretariat (SEHAB), Urban-Think Tank, and various international partners focused on a reconsideration of minimal habitation in dense urban space. The project proposes that architects eschew their conventional role in traditional hierarchies and instead act as an enabling connection between the opposing forces of top-down planning and bottom-up initiatives. The book focuses on issues related to São Paulo’s urban development, covering topics such as water management, waste recycling, slum morphology, and economic development.

São Paulo Architecture Experiment

Publications

Torre David, a 45-story skyscraper in Caracas, has remained uncompleted since the Venezuelan economy collapsed in 1994. Today, it is the improvised home to more than 750 families living in an extra-legal and tenuous squat, that some have called a ‘vertical slum’. Urban-Think Tank spent a year studying the physical and social organization of this ruin-become home. Richly illustrated with photographs by Iwan Baan, Torre David: Informal Vertical Communities 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. Including contributions from Andres Lepik, André Kitagawa, Arno Schlueter, and Christian Schmid, this thought-provoking work not only investigates informal vertical communities and the architecture that supports them, but also issues a call for action: to see in informal settlements a potential for innovation and experimentation, with the goal of putting design in service to a more equitable and sustainable future.

Torre David: Informal Vertical Communities

The third issue of SLUM Lab focuses on human and capital flows between the Netherlands and Morocco to explore how urban ‘islands’ or ghettos can be conceived as laboratories of resource management and sustainable practices with the potential to reduce poverty and address marginalization through spatial tactics. Supported by Utrecht Manifest, and produced as part of the ‘Hoograven Invites You!’ project presented at the 3rd Biennal for Social Design in October 2009, the publication includes contributions from Pieter Hooimeijer, Henk Ovink, Wim Marseille, Simone Rots, Ghita Skalli, Henk Oosterling, Madelon Vriesendorp, and Bureau E.A.S.T., as well as students from Columbia University GSAPP and Utrecht University.

Release	September 2011
Editors	Alfredo Brillembourg, Hubert Klumpner, Denise Hoffman Brandt
Associate Editor	Julia Farr
Design	Paperwhite Studio
Production	Kjirsten Alexander, Marielly Casanova, Michael Contento, Allison Schwartz, Lindsey Sherman
Sponsors	Columbia University GSAPP, City College of New York
Pages	96

SLUM Lab 6: Last Round Ecology