Writing+1

Urban design and architecture are two careers related to each other. But, they aren’t the same thing of course. Both are concerned about making places, architecture is about creating shelters and provide them of the settings for certain activities, on the other hand urban planning is about developing visions for places and inventing environments. Architects communicate information, establish and differentiate here and there, private or public, habitable or uninhabitable spaces; urban planners analyze places and people and develop polices related to the environment they built. The biggest difference between urban planners and architects is that the first ones have to consider groups of people and buildings complete environments, and the second ones have to consider only the needs of smaller groups of people. In Caracas, we can observe that the city wasn´t planned, also there are a lot of buildings that don’t respond to their context, and that is the result of a heap of untrained or just bad urban planners and architects. Also, there are a lot of pretty places and spaces created for them. In my opinion Caracas is a mix of the best and the worst professionals. But I can´t deny that the worst are more than the best. For example, the Caracas Palace is not just an autistic building because it breaks with all the standards of Altamira, it is also a big white box with stranger forms; of course, this is just my humble opinion. The black cube in front the C.C.C.T is a pretty interesting building designed by an excellent architect, but it´s implanted in a place where it doesn´t belong. Those are two examples.