ARCHITECTURAL WORLD

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. Entries A–F 405 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 Vicent...

Architect, Spain Félix Candela’s works in Mexico, the majority of which were executed between 1952 and 1968, provide some of the finest examples of functionality fused with plastic expression that exist in that nation to date. His forms are extremely reductive and simple, and his approach is clearly seen in works such as his ultrathin shells, particularly the hypar shell (1.5 centimeters) of the Cosmic Rays Pavilion (1952) at the new campus of the National Autonomous University in Mexico City and in the vaults of the Mexico City Stock Exchange (1955). Candela’s genius in devising new methods of calculating shell forms is illustrated by a variety of roof constructions, such as the simple umbrella, and short and long vaults. These structures attest to his technical expertise and his fluency in geometry as well as his sense of poetry, as seen in what are widely regarded as his free-edged masterpieces, Las Manantiales Restaurant (1958), where the structure, consisting of an octagonal groin...