Disarming Architecture

Abstract

The superblocks built by the Banco Obrero in Caracas, the 2 de diciembre housing project -today 23 de enero– with which we started the housing component of the exhibition Latin America in Construction: Architecture 1955- 1980, was, along with Cerro Piloto, the most important project of the National Housing Plan implemented in Caracas in the 1950s by the architects of the Taller del Banco Obrero (tabo). Built in lightning speed, these were massive urban planning operations that aimed to transform the physical environment of the city by eradicating Caracas’ shantytowns through large investments in public works. Speed and economy justified their crudeness and modest finishes, their serial production and repetitive imprint. Their rationalized production and construction was addressed with a use of color that aimed to transform these housing blocks into a colossal abstract geometric composition installed in the landscape. Under Carlos Raúl Villanueva’s watchful and masterful eye we encounter a model for the concrete appropriation of the sensible and of the natural; a model to be repeated, amplified and extended.