Rio’s Lost Paradise
The caretaker, sometimes armed, is on the lookout for intruders. Twice a day he climbs the 37 stories of the residential building he guards. He doesn’t greet anyone as he makes his rounds and no one greets him because despite the fact that it is over 40 years old, the building is empty and no one has ever officially lived there.
The building that I’m talking about is in Barra da Tijuca and was once called Torre Abraham Lincoln – today it is usually referred to simply as Torre H (‘Torre’ means tower). Alongside this abandoned building sits its inhabited and fully functional identical twin, Torre Charles de Gaulle. They make a strange looking pair and immediately caught my eye when I started working nearby.
What’s wrong with this picture? Torre Charles de Gaulle on the left is a fully functioning building complete with satellite dishes and a/c units. Torre H, on the right, is a windowless abandoned shell.
When I first saw Torre H I had no idea how old it was – I thought maybe there was just a short delay in the construction work. As time passed I noticed that there were no windows being put in, no builders, in fact no activity whatsoever.