Ciudad Universitaria, complejo central 1954.
shantytowns, that in 1950 amounted to 25,885 (Acedo Mendoza 1967, p. 122). Despite this harsh reality of marginality, the city showed a progressive will that integrated the efforts of the state and civil society. Along with the superblocks, the state built schools, health and recreation centers throughout the country. The Conahotu hotel chain –Corporación Nacional de Hoteles y Turismo, created in 1956 and one of its most notable examples– convened the most prominent modern Venezuelan architects for the construction of tourist resorts: the El Llano Alto in Barinas (Carpio y Suárez), the Bella Vista in Margarita (Vegas y Galia), the Prado Río in Mérida (Sanabria and Volante), the El Moruco in Santo Domingo (Fruto Vivas), the Tamá in San Cristóbal (Julio Volante), the Cumboto in Cumaná (Don Hatch), the Guaicamacuto in La Guaira (Malaussena, Beckoff, Heufer and Jebens), the Trujillo in Trujillo (Casas Armengol); the Aguas Calientes in Táchira (Ferris, Vegas and Ferrero), among others.
"almost brutal" concrete, according to Hitchcock 13 ; then, going through a virtual enclosure composed of fragments of volumes, perforated walls and artistic works, he would enter the hall covered by the Calder "clouds": again, the sky, open to a new dimension. The paradox is that you went in to be outside. In June of 1952, the architect informed the authorities of the projects department of the university city institute that he was in consultation with foreign artists. In fact, he had established contact with Giedion, Léger and Bloch and already had a large group of artists willing to collaborate with this integrating enterprise. Also included were Vassarely, Pevsner, Arp, Lobo, Lam, Bloch and Laurens, along with Venezuelans Manaure, González Bogen, Vigas, Narvaéz, Navarro, Castro and Oramas, all big names. In a document that has nothing to do with this experience, Lucio Costa rightly highlighted the conditions for a possible artistic integration: "…the important thing is that the architecture itself be conceived and executed with a plastic conscience, that is, that the architect be himself, an artist. Because only then will the painter or the sculptor have the conditions to be integrated into the whole architectural composition as one of its constituent elements…" 14 Since the inauguration of the Covered Plaza and the Aula Magna, on March 2, 1954, the complex was considered by critics as an "exceptional" work. The Aula Magna was inaugurated for the celebration of the X Inter-American Conference, where most of the countries signed the declaration against communism that formalized the Cold War in the continent. In turn, Professor Giedion presented the work as a fortunate fulfillment of his ideals, and compared the result by Villanueva with the "late cooperation" of Jacques Lipchitz in the Ministry of Education of Rio, and with the Harkness Commons of Gropius ("a difficulty that arises from one simple reason: they did not work together from the beginning"). 15
THE INTEGRATION OF THE ARTS
In the Ciudad Universitaria of Caracas, Carlos Raúl Villanueva put to the test the statements of Siegfried Giedion and José Luis Sert on "The New Monumentality", one of whose points consisted in the "integration of the arts". It was one of the most successful and remarkable experiences of complementation between both disciplines. 12 For the development of the project, Villanueva did not form a team of architects; unlike at the UNAM of Mexico, he rather kept the academic practice of the atelier and personally assumed the design of the whole complex and the landscaping. The symbolic character of an environment surrounded by murals and exempt modern works of art had its point of greatest expression inside the Aula Magna, with the "clouds" by Calder, discarding formal aspects of its volume. The path from the street to a seat in the hall was disturbing. From the outside, a visitor would notice irregular masses of
12 "In countries where modern architecture had been imposed early on and in which it had been entrusted with communal buildings that demanded more than the solution of mere functional problems, it is noted that these buildings lacked something. This something was architectural imagination […] that could have satisfied the longing for monumentality. In addition to this, something decisive: the architect, the sculptor and the painter had lost contact with each other. They did not know how to work collaboratively […]". Giedion,
Siegfried: "Sobre una nueva monumentalidad", in Arquitectura y Comunidad. Nueva Visión, Buenos Aires 1957. 13 Hitchcock, Henry-Russell: Latin American Architecture Since 1945, p. 48 The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1955. 14 Costa, Lucio: "Art, manifestation normale de vie", Lausanne 1968. 15 Giedion, Siegfried: Walter Gropius, p. 59. Dover Publications, New York 1992.
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