The University City of Caracas is the headquarters of the Central University of Venezuela and the most outstanding work of the architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva, who gave life to this world, cultural and natural heritage of humanity with the design and construction of dozens of buildings that , due to its daring and modern style for the time, marked a before and after in the architecture of the country.
The place, located in the Los Chaguaramos sector of Caracas, has nine faculties, administrative and research units, cultural, sports and hospital services.
This project formally began on October 2, 1943, when President Medina Angarita decreed the creation of the University City Institute, whose main function was to build the new city.
Villanueva headed the Department of Architecture and was the main person in charge of building the new headquarters of the UCV, for which he visited and exchanged ideas with those responsible for the construction of the university city of Bogotá in Colombia.
Later, in 1945, the construction of the project began with a main axis that started from the University Clinical Hospital and culminated in the Olympic stadium, and was complemented by the different buildings of the Institutes of Anatomy and Experimental Medicine, which were distributed in a symmetrical way to achieve the definition of space.
In the 50s, Villanueva gave the project a 160-degree turn by making the decision to break with the established scheme and developed a proposal where the buildings rise above a large garden, emerging above the treetops. He establishes that the complex would be an uninterrupted space, which achieves the dissolution of the limits between inside and outside.
“In effect, a new space has been born, a new spatial sensation that is very different in its content, more dynamic, more active, more sisterly. He has managed to avoid not only the purely geometric form, but now everything dissolves, thins out, becomes continuous and transparent and, above all, joins other spaces and other volumes and other openings, with a wealth of possibilities never imagined. Everything is crossed, interpreted in a fluid and penetrating way, in a rich and powerful range and expresses its own characteristics that are: elasticity, movement, continuity and dynamism”, indicates Villanueva, according to the Cultural Heritage Notebooks of the researchers María Fernanda Jaua, Ana Maria Marin and Maria Antonia Rodriguez.
The architect established that the buildings would have spaces that opened to the outside and communicated by means of covered corridors that would cross the gardens and allow a view from one space to the other, while the network of streets and parking lots communicates the university with the rest of the city.
First works of the University City of Caracas
The clinic buildings and the Schools of Medicine and Nursing, the Pathological Institute and the Institute of Tropical Medicine constitute the first phase of construction of the University City. Then the Administrative and Cultural Center of the Covered Plaza, the Aula Magna and the Central Library building are raised.
The clinical hospital was built in a large building that watches over the rest of the city and has a double symmetry floor plan that makes up the central void that is responsible for relating and connecting the eight wings that comprise it.
The breaking of the first plan also brought about external modifications of the medical buildings. We sought to soften the rigid symmetry with the collaboration of the artist Mateo Manaure through a polychrome that alternately colors the cornices, walls and columns of the space.
At the same time, the Industrial Technical School was built, which was not part of the Ciudad Universitaria project at first, and was later annexed as the Faculty of Sciences.
varsity sports complex
For the year 1949 the construction of the Olympic and baseball stadiums begins, where the architect Villanueva implements a novel proposal including compositions linked to the new forms of urbanism. To these spaces are added the swimming pool complex, the court of honor and the covered gym, thus becoming one of the most complete sports venues in the city.
This part of the work, whose development took about ten years, was never completed according to Villanueva's initial project. Among the pending was the double-curved concrete roof that must have roofed the indoor gym.
Central complex and faculties of the UCV
In 1952, construction began on the central complex made up of the institutional buildings that communicate with each other through the Covered Plaza, such as the Aula Magna, the Central Library, the Concert Hall, the Auditorium, and the Rector's Office.
The university clock was also located in the place, which is characterized by its skeleton structure based on ascending concrete.
Another of the innovations was the pedestrian and automobile separation in the enclosure with the installation of covered corridors that form the pedestrian walkway.
By 1953 the construction of the faculties of Humanities and Architecture began, the latter being a project of significant importance for the author, for which the building stands out in the variety of roofs of the workshops where he experimented with structures and forms, in addition to the presence of works by Alejandro Otero.
Subsequently, in 1956, the works of the faculties of Pharmacy and Dentistry began; in 1963 the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences; in 1964 the Institute of Materials and Structural Models and in 1967 the School of Sanitary Engineering.
With the aim of integrating the different arts in a single complex, Villanueva had the participation of 25 national and foreign artists who made sculptures, stained glass windows and murals in all the spaces.
Villanueva's Legacy
Villanueva's health was complicated in 1972 because he began to suffer from Parkinson's, so he delegated the design of the remaining buildings of the complex to his team, as well as to government and university authorities.
Among the works that the architect began and could not complete is the building of the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences, which was completed by his work group after his death.
In 1969, one of the first changes in the city project took place when the Botanical Garden, declared a national park, and the Zona Rental were detached from the complex.
Subsequently, in the 70s, the buildings for university residences, built in 1951, were adapted for the schools of Statistics and Actuarial Sciences, Anthropology and Social Work.
The architect and professor at the UCV, Lesmes Castañeda, explained that there are four emblematic additions to the original work. The first of these is the Deanery of Engineering building, designed by the architect Gorka Dorronsoro, who was also one of the members of the original Villanueva team and continued with his legacy.
Next, the architects Henrique Hernández, César Martín, Andrés Simón Herrera and María Teresa Novoa built the Trasbordo building, completed in 1977, as an experimental and temporary work.
Later, in 1989, the Nicolás Bianco Institute of Immunology was inaugurated, located behind the Pathology Institute and whose project was promoted by the University Council. Likewise, the architect Donrronsoro, with the collaboration of Julio Riquezes, Rosario Salazar, Gladys de Sánchez, Javier Nosti and Alberto Elola, completed the building of the School of Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Sciences in 1988. Finally, it was completed in 2006 the Rafael Rangel vaccine production plant, designed by architects Roberto Puchetti and Max Rengifo.
Castañeda added that other buildings of little importance were built, such as the one to the west of the School of Sanitary Engineering, which was originally a pre-designed module for Fundacomún and is currently a dependency of the School of Sanitary Engineering.
Other works were also carried out on a provisional basis, including the classrooms with laminated ceilings located in front of the Faculty of Pharmacy for preparatory students.
Likewise, the professor indicated that in 1981 the Ministry of Urban Development (Mindur) finished the construction of the parking building with capacity for 2.500 vehicles and the stadium square, which links the two sports complexes to each other.
Meanwhile, the university canteen has undergone several expansions in recent decades.
He finally commented that the Ministry of Urban Development also built the new buildings of the Faculty of Sciences parallel to the path of the Clinical Hospital.
Guard
The Institute of Cultural Heritage (IPC) is the rector in terms of cultural heritage in Venezuela, it is responsible for ordering, directing and coordinating all the actions carried out in the spaces that are going to be restored; in the case of the Ciudad Universitaria, it exercises the rectory, as it is a Cultural Heritage of Humanity, explained the president of the entity, Dinorah Cruz. She added that the IPC is part of the Presidential Commission for the Restoration of the UCV and the infrastructure subcommittee that attends the complex.
He explained that for each intervention of the buildings, the projects are evaluated by a committee of experts made up of professors specialized in restoration, most of them graduates of the UCV, who define the general guidelines of how the infrastructures should be intervened.
The institute maintains the permanent inspection in the works, through the engineer Alfonso Olivares. The specialist pointed out that the architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva left the plans of the University City and how the different spaces that make it up should be preserved, in addition there is a site manager who has been in charge of making the conservation manuals.
He noted that in the university complex there are 117 buildings, of which 50 work fronts and 33 buildings have been addressed. The IPC made the diagnosis of the works of art, which will be intervened in a second phase of the beautification plan of the study house carried out by the Government.
