touring the bush (15) : caracas intervened

caracas’s active urban fabric, both in physical and abstract terms, is marked by instability (from surprise constitutional decrees to flash floods), precariousness, fragmentation (social, economic, territorial), group clashes, as well as informal practices. this setting calls for resistant yet flexible architectural interventions, an architecture that can channel insecurity and disorganization, stabilizing without stagnating, strengthening social ties and sense of place, providing a dynamic backdrop for change.


the barrios are not only sources of dismay or inspiration, a bit of both. they are sites of paradox. places of community and of exclusion, of violence and conscience, of work and abandonment, of hope and crushing, of survival and of giving up. sites that contain everything the city is, wishes it was and wasn’t, compressed, charged, accelerated.


architecture in this context is not about imposition or evasion, but about adaptation and gradual change. architects matías and mateo pinto have learned this in and from caracas. they are convinced that architects should try to give ideas more than buildings, and that architectural success is more about small victories against adversity than grand schemes or preconceived ideals.


projects include the san miguel communal house in the barrio de la vega, the vertical gymnasium (collaborative project with hubert klumpner) and hillside housing. all of these projects are precisely focused interventions, experimental containers, with flexible and open user programs. linking service infrastructure, cultural / leisure activities and community development, this is the type of responsive architecture that manages to balance contradictory factors and pushes positive solutions.



next stop : ¡al caribe!

touring the bush (14) : caracas revival

in their book informal city : caracas case, alfredo brillembourg and hubert klumpner, playing on goethe’s somewhat corny metaphor, describe architecture in this city not as frozen music, but frozen politics. this affirmation, wanting to be fresh, is actually more feeble and ineffective than it might seem at first hand. in caracas, architecture (like politics) is anything but frozen, and particularly difficult to grasp.


there is a whole different set of caracas and even chávez buffs, and unlike globaliphobia brats, these guys and gals bathe regularly and they usually don’t think there’s anything wrong with buying superexpensive croc birkins. they might even own one themselves. by now, we should be used to things shabby turning chic. in the case of latinoamérica, at least since the 60s, local art movements have led the way for successive waves of marginality “revivals,” taking from the heroes of yonder like helio oiticica and his tropicalian anti-conformist installations. in the past few years, contemporary art and culture cores like london or new york and even smaller-fry capitals of sophistication like paris or barcelona have been swept off their designer-clad-feet by the wit and low-key hip of latinoamérican production in contexts of adversity.


from the 2003 “structure of survival” at the venice biennale to the hyper-sarcastic pop sentence of pablo leon de la barra’s apex new york show that same year, “to be political, it has to look nice,” works that draw inspiration from peripheral precariousness have established themselves as a firm buoy in the art market. now architecture is wanting to catch up, and caracas provides a particularly engrossing platform for tempting, powerful-if-penniless architectural practices.


taking hints from sources such as the multidisciplinary (art) work of marjetica potrc, and trying to go a tad deeper (potrc's work sometimes falls short of its declared intentions, over-aestheticizing the subject matter, and, in an uncomfortable and very self-flattering gesture, keeping a ludicrous amount of faith in the gallery, the white cube, as a space of reflection) by forging stong, longer-term ties to city practices and on-site phenomena; young troupes of architects-artists-researchers-seekers have taken to the hillsides and the vertical barrios of caracas in search of answers and alternatives.


many of these initiatives and projects have been condensed by the caracas urban think tank, a sort of architectural ngo, a practice founded on critical research and alternative design projects, with a strong emphasis on practical solutions and experimental intervention. the utt was founded in 1993, and since it has withstood and embraced the jolts and trembles (political, social, architectural and otherwise) of the city, managing to bring practical, technical, semiotic and aesthetic concerns closer to the everyday experience of an exceptional urban fabric, to caracas's wastelands of modernity and makeshift proto-utopias.



informality, pragmatism, poverty, innovation, participation, action, conflict, paradox, opportunities conquered and lost. this is the raw matter of the caracas architect. this is why architectural practice and grasp requires exceptional flexibility and open-mindedness. this is why the caracas architect is often not the professional, but the average citizen.

next : caracas intervened

touring the bush (13) : caracas chavista

move over, che. there’s a new big man in town, and on t-shirts. in the nineties we had marcos, now the sporadic-shower kids of genoa, seattle, gràcia, and other “politically sensitive” first-world enclaves have a new icon of enduring revolución, all the current rage in lefty-pop-politics and resistencia superstardom: hugo chávez.


1989 was the tragic year of the caracazo, the biggest social shakedown caracas faced in the last decades. in 1992, chávez appeared on the radar of global politics after two failed coup-d’états against president carlos andrés pérez, who had adopted an active repression against the protests and riots of those years (pérez, a former socialist-turned-sucker-for-washington-consensus-economics, was later removed from the presidency and imprisoned for an outrageous corruption case. he later went into exile). chávez, back then lieutenant cornel, went to jail for two years. he was later pardoned and went on to try his luck in politics, founding the mvr (movimiento quinta república, or fifth republic movement). he won the 1998 presidential election, and from then on things in venezuela would never be the same (well, some things).


privatizations were reverted, a new constitution was sworn, social programs sprung out of nowhere (sustained by petrol-dollars), massive for and against chávez demonstrations rocked the capital (around twenty between 2000 and 2004), a bush-backed coup against chávez failed, and chávez was on his way to becoming the hemispherical anti-freetrade, anti-bush spearhead (he called bush “the devil” in a speech given at the UN general assembly). his local “bolivarian missions” extended to a regional and even global call for radical change. supposedly.



chávez is a polarizing figure. he has taken control over parliament, the military, and the local media (he’s even created telesur, an alternative t.v. broadcasting company that is a sort telemundo-crossdressed-al-jazeera). he’s unsettled foreign affairs and silenced the opposition. he’s pushed the resurgence of the latinoamerican left and proven a vital ally to castro’s withering regime in cuba.


what about the city? has caracas become a revolutionary capital? is there evidence of radical change in the urban fabric? well, yes, but not really because of chavismo, not even his terms. chávez has maintained old political and economic structures, and he has reinstalled even older ones (the return of economic populismos : price controls, state intervention, subsidies, oil-funded spenditure). the precise, acupunctural interventions that have seized caracas and her barrios in the last years do reflect a generalized discontent and a reinvigorated social participation, but they are not direct outcomes of state policy. some are even funded by the devil's advocates (world bank, etc. etc.) what lies in the brick and mortar moutains of caracas's barrios is a semi-latent alternative to pure bolivarismo, a more active, pragmatic and open approach to social needs and problems. another revolution, still in the rough.

next : caracas revival

touring the bush (12) : caracas carcass

a carcass might look dead, but it’s not. i mean, it’s dead, but not dead-dead. did you know after you die your hair and fingernails keep growing? o.k., that’s not exactly true, it’s just an illusory effect of skin retraction due to body dehydration. but still... how about the chicken running after having its head cut-off? headless poultry can still run and its heart still beat as active reflexes stemming from the intact spinal chord for several seconds after decapitation. there are even accounts of miraculous .beheaded birds that went on living for months.



anyway, what I’m really talking about is living corpses, not the living dead : the dead body as a life locus, a breading field for bacteria and maggots and all that icky stuff. well, it happens to cities. cities die, layer after layer. but the dead layers aren’t dead-dead. dead city-layers aren’t as meaningful and functional and obviously active as when they are alive. but usually it takes time before the traces of a dead layer are lost, and in the meantime they prove to be excellent sites for parasitic developments. call it whatever you want: informality, appropriation, temporal use of spaces… it’s the icky stuff in our cities we don’t necessarily like or understand or find “healthy” or “normal.” but in the underdeveloping cities of latinoamérica (and elsewhere), this animate rankness is thriving.

caracas might just be the crown jewel of our sub-continental modern-city carcass collection. after the chavista revolution, the dead modernist layer of the venezuelan capital is host to the most intense and exquisite necrotrophic urban phenomena in the region.



caracas was a teen casualty, caught in the failure and fall of local modernismos almost still in bloom. celeste olalquiaga tells it like the plot of an urban telenovela:

"between the 1940s and the 1970s, the placid city of santiago de león de caracas inhaled the air of modernization, developing into a full-blown metropolis. its daring architecture and raging urbanism left many of its inhabitants breathless, amazed by the ongoing transformation of their hometown into a burgeoning center of international commerce and foreign pop culture. skyscrapers and highways were the signs of a blossoming adolescence that turned caracas into a world capital (paris-new york-caracas, an affluent gallery boasted under its name), which the rest of the americas looked to with envy or greed. perhaps it was the venezuelans' passion for melodrama, but so much abundance just couldn't last. doomed by the same black gold that had given it such vibrant energy, the country that had cheerfully danced in oil-money suddenly found itself catching up with all it had ignored; unfinished projects, overwhelming misery and an enormous national debt adding up to a huge bill for a party that was definitely over. like an orchid left in the sun, the modern caracas withered, its remarkable structures buried under the weight of forgetfulness and disrepair, its vitality sinking into a benign apathy."



pobre niña rica (y moderna)

this is were the story starts and ends at the same time, and starts again, and everything gets fabulously gross. i wish blogger came with odorama.

next : caracas chavista y revolucionaria

touring the bush (11) : caracas, intro/outro

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