My first post on this website was about the sunny side of the slums: I linked to documentaries showing that life in the habitat of millions of people worldwide is not only misery (see also: Luan’s post).This time, some stuff that is actually improving the architecture and infrastructure of the busiest, chaotic, livliest and dangerous places.

The Urban Think Tank (“our work is about avoiding catastrophes”) was founded in Caracas, Venezuela in 1998. The company has the global south as its workplace: “a network of urban villages, a place, that is less a place than a condition.” In practice, this means they construct houses, public buildings and infrastructures in slums.

One of the UTT’s master pieces stands in the densely populated Bello Campo barrio in Caracas. It’s a fitness flat. The Vertical Gymnasium “transforms the site of a former soccer field into a fitness complex with basketball courts, a dance studio, a running track, a climbing wall and an open air soccer field.” UTT claims the building “has helped lower the crime rate in this barrio by more than 30 percent since its inauguration.” Besides gyms, UTT also designed dry toilets, a street children center and other public and private buildings in Caracas and all over the world.

If you are curious about the people behind the Urban Think Tank, I highly recommend the documentary Caracas, the informal city. UTT is exposing in the MoMA in New York this autumn, so to the lucky winners of this contest: prolong your stay after the MDG summit and go see them, and many other "post-utopian architectural interventions". The exposition Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement kicks off October 3.

Baruta Vertical Gymnasium #2, Caracas, Venezuela. Photo Urban Think Tank