Final+Project

**media type="youtube" key="kw0M8eSNh-U" height="344" width="425" Final Project: A unique city**

Hi! I'm Gaudy Martínez. I'm a student of Architecture and today I want to share my thoughts and reflexions about the uniqueness of a city we all know: Caracas. I chose this city because is where I've lived all my life and it always has caught my attention the fact that all its houses, buildings, malls, parks and even roads are different from the others in town. In the following minutes I will explain why Caracas is unique to me, according to colors, lights, textures, acoustics, rhythms, vertical & horizontal circulation, and space & scale. Who knows? You could start to see your city from another point of view...

Color: Caracas is a colorful city. It has been known as “the city of red roofs” and its modern buildings have intense colors. In the first decades of the twentieth century, the buildings were very uniform in color. With the increase in office buildings, architects had more freedom to experiment with the colors of the façades. Since then, we can see blue façades, like in the Parque Cristal tower, green façades, like in Banesco Tower and Ciudad Banesco building, black glasses as windows, like the ones on the Cubo Negro, brick covers, seen in many buildings, and a more wide pattern of colors in general. Light: Lighting in an important element in design. Here in Caracas we can find many buildings with a good light distribution. “Multinacional de Seguros” tower uses the accent light to show off the space effects. But light is more often used in buildings to give a general illumination, to light up the streets or to stand out the entrances. Textures: In Caracas, most of the buildings are covered with stones, bricks, glass or they are just painted. This gives us a variety of textures in the architectural elements of the city. For example: This pictures shows some buildings that mix stones, bricks, paint, glass, wood and metal in the same structure or in two structures not very far away from each other. Acoustics: Caracas is unique… It almost has more cars than people. And that creates a huge acoustic problem. I live near the main highway of the city (The Francisco Fajardo Highway) and the only thing that annoys my family and me is the noise of the cars passing over and over again. And this happens in many places of the city. In the areas where there’s not too much traffic, noise is not a problem. Rhythms: In this city, the rhythm can be seen in the windows and balconies (if there are) of the buildings. Rhythm is also found on the urbanizations where the buildings are all the same. An example of this case is the Parque Central Residential Complex. Vertical and horizontal circulation: Due to the fast growing of the population in the city, most of the buildings (especially residential ones) are built upward. These buildings have elevators and stairs. Malls and office buildings usually have escalators too. There is for sure a good vertical circulation. Horizontal circulation is most found in the hallways of the malls, like in San Ignacio Center. In the new home of the National Gallery of Art we can appreciate a horizontal structure, but it’s hard to find this on the city. Space and scale: Unlike other cities in Latin America, Caracas’ buildings are separated from each other. In Buenos Aires, for example, is common to see that buildings don’t have spaces between them. In Caracas, that space is often the entrance to the building’s parking lot. That gives me the sensation of having more space on the streets. But in general lines, we’re running out of space in this city!

The integration of these concepts turns Caracas into a unique place in the country, in the world. Caracas is a warm and colorful place; its buildings have hundreds of shapes, sizes, materials and functions. Being here is a visual delight in every sense. But life here also has ugly parts: the excess of cars, the little space for so many people, the deterioration of the buildings and the lack of awareness of its habitants, make Caracas a chaotic city. This project made me more conscious of the issues of my city and made me see the beautiful things we have, but it also made me see how we are destroying our town. We have to put our little grain of sand, otherwise, our kids and our grandsons will receive just a deteriorated piece of the city.