ABSTRACT
Adopting a transnational approach, this chapter examines the connections between brutalist architecture, postindustrial ruins, urban squatting, and gentrification in the visual imaginary of cities such as London, Caracas, and Paris. The chapter focuses on a case study that brings together brutalism and ruins in a new, hybrid form specific to the era of globalization: the Torre David, an unfinished corporate skyscraper in Venezuela that was occupied by the city’s poor and temporarily transformed into a vertical concrete squat. Adapting Arjun Appadurai’s concept of spectral housing, the chapter considers how the visual treatment of brutalist architecture – particularly in institutionalized contexts such as Tate Britain and the Venice Architecture Biennale – produces a spectacle of the abject. This spectacle, I propose, ultimately reinforces contemporary urbanism’s addiction to gentrification, stylized boutique living, and glossy, generic architecture.
