Abstract
The first political trame of the Venezuela urban history, established by “La Comisión Municipal de Urbanismo”in 1937;”La Dirección de Urbanismo”,”El Plan Monumental de Caracas’ in 1939 and the 1952 and 1954 Caracas planimetry regulation plan, ruled the urban planning development and appointed a new social and institutional order.With the single-family house concept as a study unit, the first city densification process was established, following an open connected set of statutes and urban plans, during the 1945-1965 period.For which it is of undoubtedly testimonial value in the city’s morphological growth. From the simplicity of Armando Reveron’s El Castillete in 1920 and Carlos Raúl Villanueva’s Caoma 1951-1952 and Sotavento 1957-1958 at the littoral central coast; as well as Dirk Bornhorst’s Hato Hamburgo1956 and Klaus Heufer’s Quinta ‘H’ 1960 in Caracas, are clear examples of the constructive outthrust in which the house is built using the single-family house concept.lnitial demonstrations that compose the spirit of the time and the starting point of this study. The analysis explores processes architectonic, considering as a fact what belongs to the local place. A method that will prove,which ones are the great ‘invariants’ that a culture transmits and how they can be used as materials of the project. The single-family house concept developed by a group of foreigners architects, concretes the notion of modern will. Some of them lived in Venezuela ,in the United States; others went back to Europe; but, all of them made multiple contributions out of the experience they brought from their countries of origin.The method (means,way) of interaction with the local scenery sets the introduction to the first steps of the project activity between the local people, the outsiders and the landscape. However,it is just only through the single-family house concept that the following personalities stand out: Jan Gorecki (1914), Russian origin; Klaus Heufer (1923) and Dirk Bornhorst (1927), both born in Germany; Richard Neutra (1892-1970), Austrian origin;Arthur Khan (1910) born in lstanbul, Turkey and finally: Gio Ponti (1897-1970), Domenico Fillipone(1903-1976), Athos Albertoni (1905-1977) and Guido Guazzo (1930), all of ltalian precedence.The significance of the whole process goes far beyond the constructive assorted offer; there existed a concentrated and significant amount of architectural requests at national level; mainly, impelled by and as a consequence of an intense and profitable oíl activity, between 1945 and 1965. During this period, the European architects, the Venezuelan ones and their clients, showed an ostensible national leadership. They constitute a generation that prompted the construction of a new stage in the local architecture.The typology of the single-family house projected by these professionals was driven in a particular way during the mentioned period, reached an important grade of development and a great conceptual and formal quality.Their own houses play a main role in the repertory that composes this investigation (investigative work) and with them,through them; we reach the point of defining the modern will in the single-family house concept. Over this ordered plan and putting into execution,we recognized the customs transmitted from one generation to another-the requirements and the mixture.The passing from the landed property colonial house toward the ‘Quinta’ and the modern single-family house concept, as a model of expansion of the city and under a plastic focalization at which the open plant is recognized as a principie of spatial organization, open forms, as a general concept.The court, as an architectonic element susceptible to new possibilities of interpretation.The modern will in the single-family house it’s a permanent invitation to bring an interior habitable space to the exterior, which is so typical from Caracas and that indeed extended the space farther beyond the own limits of the volume.
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