Circulation+Architecture

From an architectural perspective Venezuela is unique, and the circulation in its buildings is unique as well. Since its colonization, architecture has changed along with the cities, a clear example is the city of Caracas, a horizontal city until the twentieth century, when our country started taking economic importance in the region thanks to the oil based economy.

In the colonial times, the horizontal circulation was definitely more important than the vertical one, the houses had usually only one floor and the colonial cities used to be plain and horizontal. The circulation occurred around a central courtyard, and in those central, horizontal circulations based houses the Venezuelan architecture remained until the arrival of the twentieth century, and modernism with itself.



With new oil based economy, Caracas and the other cities started developing, and with development comes skyscrapers and tall buildings, suddenly horizontal circulation lost its importance in the buildings, and vertical circulation started being extremely important as well. In the ciudad universitaria, we can see different high buildings, like the library and the school of architecture and urbanism, and not so high buildings like the engineering school, for example. In the most important construction in Venezuelan history, both horizontal and vertical circulation took importance, also the pedestrians take special importance in this project with the covered corridors.

The Teresa Carreño complex is an important horizontal project, but in its counterpart we can see the Parque Central complex, with the tallest skyscrapers in South America, showing the importance of high rise buildings in Caracas, and how we can see a vertical evolution in the city. Also the size of the actual Caracas valley along with de demographic growth was an important factor for that evolution. In the future, this line is going to continue, with a special importance in high rise buildings due to the habitat problems, and the elevated costs of the pieces of land in the cities of Venezuela.