CARACAS, VENEZUELA

In the early 20th century, Venezuela’s economy changed from agriculture to oil
production. For Caracas, its capital, this change implied growing in less than 100 years
from just over 100,000 to more than four million people. With an area more than 300
times larger, the originally compact town between two creeks had expanded all over the
valley.
Caracas’s present appearance, and what is likely to prevail as its structure, is a product
of the 20th century, expressing the paradigms of modernity with the shortcomings of
historical disruptions and exaggerated optimism. Without a city project, unwilling to
preserve a past it is eager to overcome, and open to foreign influences because of both
intense and diverse immigration and its traditional inclusiveness, Caracas has myriad
distinct and diffuse enclaves.
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Founded in 1567, Caracas had, by the late 18th century, the size and structure that it
would have at the start of the 20th century. After the death of dictator Juan Vicente
Gómez (1935) and the return of government activities, this humble armature proved
inappropriate for the capital emerging from those new conditions, and reflections
flourished. In 1939, a team coordinated by French designer Maurice Rotival proposed to
expand the city east and south with a system of diagonal avenues and gridded streets,
stretching out the foundational grid with a pattern more able to interact with the valley’s
topography.
Although political turmoil prevented Rotival’s plan from being pursued, the urban
awareness that it awakened affected the city’s form. Its building paradigms supported the
first systematic urban codes (1942), applied on La Candelaria, the easternmost district of
traditional downtown. Its fanlike plan modeled San Bernardino, a new section on the
town’s northeast edge. Further east, Roche’s Altamira relied on monumental avenues and
civic spaces for urbanizing a still-unconquered land. Although Avenida Bolívar, the
plan’s major urban space and its only initiated part, still awaits completion (even after
Carlos Gómez’s Parque Vargas project of the 1980s), it has become the city’s most
emblematic promenade.
Being French, Roche and Rotival’s proposals evoked Parisian urban-planning
paradigms. Dependencies from agricultural times had Venezuela looking to Europe for
models; speaking French and following Paris’s fashion was a symbol of architectural
sophistication.
In fact, Venezuelan architects trained in France were to develop these urban
transformations, displaying in the 1930s and 1940s a body of work still among the city’s
best. Among others, Carlos Raúl Villanueva’s (1900–75) El Silencio (1942), a housing
district on the western end of Avenida Bolívar; Luis Malaussena’s (1900–62) Edificio
París (1948), a skillfully articulated urban block; Carlos Guinand’s (1889–1963) Casa
Taurel (1941), an urban palazzo later to become a model in residential neighborhoods; and, very
specially, Cipriano Domínguez’s (1904–95) Centre Simón Bolívar (1949), an urban
compound of government offices, retail spaces, squares, and parking facilities, introduced
elements of modern architecture and a completely new urban monumentality. Architects
coming from Europe would support and enrich these transformations. These architects
include Manuel Mujica-Millán (Vitoria, 1897; Mérida, 1965), whose well-tempered
eclecticism gained him the favor of both government and aristocracy, allowing him to
build some of Caracas’s first International Style buildings, and Arthur Kahn (Istanbul,
1910), whose Altamira building finely integrated urban grandeur and modern linearity in
a piece that still commands this district’s main space.
New economic conditions also brought new influences. With the increasing presence
of American companies and the international scenario resulting from World War II,
attention shifted from Europe to the United States. This shift correspondingly marked the
replacement of urban design concerns by city-planning tools and of the influence of
Beaux-Arts principles by those of International Style. Expressing this change are the
Military Academy (1951) by Luis Malaussena and the Central University Campus (1945–
65) by Carlos Raúl Villanueva. Whereas Academia Militar, ceremonially approached
along Los Próceres promenade, elaborates on classical monumentality with somewhat
abstract devices, Ciudad Universitaria’s spatial interactions, playful corridors, and ever-
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changing territories of light and shadow introduce, with the rigor of its author’s Beaux-
Arts training, values of modernity that were to become quintessential to Caracas.
Architects now trained in the United States began to practice in an active
situation that soon produced remarkable modern buildings.
Simultaneously, under the guiding presence of Villanueva, these young
architects participated in the founding of the School of Architecture (1955)
at the Universidad Central de Venezuela. With Torre Polar (1957) by
Vegas and Galia, Hotel Humboldt (1956) by Tomás José Sanabria, and
even Ciudad Universitaria opening or just being built, the city adopted new architectural principles that guided the education of architects to come.
American planner Francis Violich’s Piano Regulador de Caracas (1951) had no overall
formal premise; instead, it evolved from land patterns of farms and villages along the
main road built parallel to the river. Violich’s plan turns that road into the main urban
connector and turns existing farms into urban pockets to be developed as independent
compounds. Loose as the plan proved to be, it established the urban system.
Under the excitement of new paradigms and prosperous circumstances, professional
skills gained abroad and passed to new students resulted in some remarkable designs.
Jorge Romero-Gutiérrez’s Helicoide (1955), a strip of retail spaces wrapped around Roca
Tarpeya hill; the lightness of Fruto Vivas’ Club Táchira (1956) roof floating over the hill;
and the folded structures of Alejandro Pietri’s Estación de Teleférico (1956) formed an
exciting inventory of buildings. Projects by foreign architects, such as Don Hatch’s
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rationalist Edificio Mobil (1959), Emile Vestuti’s urban articulations at Banco Union
(1955), and Angelo di Sapio’s dynamic Edificio Atlantic (1956), brought Caracas local
and international acclaim.
The coherent housing experiments developed at Taller de Arquitectura del Banco
Obrero (TABO) permanently linked modern paradigms and hopes to Caracas’s
landscape. Under Villanueva’s management, with the participation of young architects
such as José Manuel Mijares and Carlos Celis-Cepero, TABO developed an ambitious
public housing plan of high quality, modeled after Le Corbusian models. From Guido
Bermúdez’s Cerro Grande (1955) to “23 de enero” neighborhood (1955) or El Paraíso
housing blocks (1957) and even beyond the now obvious mistakes of these urban
strategies, TABO established modern convictions in the architectural context of Caracas.
In the early 1960s, affected by economic depression and a growing indifference from
both government and public opinion, this promising environment seemed to fade into
mediocre buildings. Public investment concentrated on infrastructure, making highway
bridges and ramps the most significant constructions of the decade, their heroic scale both
marking and disrupting the existing urban fabric.
This crisis extended itself well into the 1970s because of architectural education and
standards. This situation sadly coincided with times of urban growth, which was
encouraged by protective housing programs and laws. The heritage of modern
architecture was enlivened by the mostly residential work of Jimmy Alcock (Caracas,
1932); the Louis Kahn-inspired work of Díquez, González, and Rivas; the few but
remarkable buildings by Gorka Dorronsoro (Caracas, 1939); and Jesús Tenreiro’s
(Valencia, 1936) early houses.
In the early 1970s, an underground transportation project was started; its first line
opened in 1983. Directed by Max Pedemonte (Havana, 1936), the Metro project also
clarified and qualified urban spaces along the lines. Despite the questionable quality of
some actual interventions, the new public areas and pedestrian links allowed by them
substantially transformed the way in which Caracas was used, connected, and understood.
Through emerging figures such as Carlos Gómez de Llarena (Zaragoza, 1939), Pablo
Lasala (Zaragoza, 1940), Jorge Rigamonti (Milan, 1940), and Oscar Tenreiro (Caracas,
1939), the 1970s recuperated design interest and care. With Jesús Tenreiro, Gómez and
Lasala founded in 1976 the Institute de Arquitectura Urbana, an independent research
organization that introduced issues of urban architecture and marked a new generation of
architects, such as Joel Sanz (Higuerote, 1947) and Federico Vegas (Caracas, 1950), who,
in competitions, exhibitions, and publications, promoted a more inclusive and complex
understanding of the city.
Perhaps the most comprehensive planning effort of this kind was the new zoning code
plan promoted by the city authority (1993–95). Acknowledging Caracas’s fragmentary
condition, different design groups were assigned different city sections to identify
character, analyze problems, and promote potential solutions. Following a coding
armature agreed on as an overall team, specific zoning regulations were designed for each
area, realizing order not from borrowed paradigms but from the city’s own form, history,
and structure. Conducted by Francisco Sesto (Vigo, 1943), the project was developed,
among others, by Enrique Larrañaga (Caracas, 1953) and Fernando Lugo (San Juan,
1953), who also proposed a new Building Codes Ordinance (1995) to coherently support
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the urban design strategy. Unfortunately, authorities resulting from the following election
did not pursue the project.
Today, Caracas is still growing intensely and often puzzlingly. Unlike the town of the
1900s, this city is decidedly modern; like its earlier incarnation, however, it still lacks a
plan.