"It was no use declaring it heritage." Paulina Villanueva, daughter of the architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva (1900-1975), author of the campus of the Central University of Venezuela, in Caracas, could not believe it when when she opened a new message on her mobile she found the images of the sinking of one of the most unique pieces of his father's work, a corridor covered in reinforced concrete, within a set that Unesco considers "a masterpiece of urban planning, architecture and art" and an "outstanding example" of the ideals of the movement modern.
Paulina is attending ICON Design's video call from New York, where she was blocked when the covid-19 pandemic was declared. Several fatal factors have converged on this catwalk, which have ended up winning: "The economic siege of the Maduro government to the universities, which have been left practically without resources, has coincided with the torrential rains that have fallen in recent days in Caracas." All this in full quarantine for the coronavirus, "which has made the university have been empty for several months."
The devil's work
The Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas (1940-1060) is the work of a life: about 40 buildings spread over 200 hectares, four areas: the university hospital (which the modern artist Mateo Manaure covered with a polychrome mural), the central complex ( in which the main classroom and the rector's office are located), the sports city and the faculties, among which the Architecture one stands out. "At the beginning of the 1950s, he began working on the central complex, which is no longer like the white-stuccoed buildings of the first stage, but a display of very bold exposed concrete forms, which he executed with engineers and integrating the arts, "explains María Fernanda Jaua, a Venezuelan architect licensed by the Faculty of Architecture at this university and now residing in Madrid.
All are united in a network of covered corridors, an extraordinary example of the adaptation of architecture to the environment. "Villanueva had the possibility of bringing to reality the ideals of modern architecture from the early 20th century, but at the same time he took into consideration the place, with its tropical climate," Jaua points out.
"For protection from the sun and heat [with shades and ventilation]", he continues, "was inspired by Spanish colonial architecture, without copying it, with elements such as lattices, corridors, open and intermediate spaces between exterior and interior. These corridors are almost a kilometer and a half of different structures that connect the buildings to walk between them protected from the sun ". In them, Villanueva had the opportunity to experiment with reinforced concrete and steel, along with engineers Juan Otaola Paván and Óscar Benedetti.
"The corridor that has fallen," explains Jaua, "has the columns to one side to leave open the views of the central garden to which the Aula Magna gives. It is an undulating corridor that is filled with water and leaves and, if not you clean it, the weight ends up affecting the structure. "
In addition, dozens of works of art are distributed throughout the city, integrated into everyday life; a "synthesis of the arts" –an idea that Le Corbusier worked on throughout his life–, in which an important group of avant-garde creators participated, such as the American Alexander Calder or the French Fernand Léger. The design includes from the landscaping, with native species of green leaf, to the door handles and of course the furniture.
"When my father went to present the project to Alexander Calder to ask him to participate, he replied: 'Villanueva, that is too ambitious, this cannot be built by a man. If you get to build it, it is because you are the devil.' Finished the set Calder presented himself in Caracas with a black chair with butterfly wings that he had made for the architect: "It is the devil's chair," he said. Now he is in the garden of the Caoma house, Villanueva's residence in Caracas.
A crazy enough official
But as miraculous as the project is the fact that Villanueva managed to carry it out without interference, from an office in the Ministry of Public Works, and passing through governments of all stripes, coups, assassinated presidents and dictatorships. "Only once was General Marcos Pérez Jiménez (1952-1958) visited," says Paulina Villanueva, also an architect and director of the Villanueva Foundation, which has spent decades ensuring the integrity of the work.
"They left with the gossip that the architect of the University City was doing a crazy thing in the great classroom with an artist, Calder, who was crazy. Pérez Jiménez approached him and asked him what was on the floor. There Calder's clouds were on the ground. And my father gave him the answer that had to be given: 'This, general, is functional.'
Calder's mobiles that populate the auditorium as floating saucers of shapes and colors radiate the acoustic waves of space, but are at the same time the icing on the cake of a synthesis of the arts that consists of a total of 107 works by 24 visual artists, among murals and sculptures.
It is not that General Pérez Jiménez shared the ideals of the modern movement. "The Venezuelan military dictatorship wanted to hold the 10th Ibero-American Conference in university in 1954, with leaders from all countries, and wanted to show itself to the world with what it knew the world valued at that time," says Paulina Villanueva. "So for at least the time until the summit was held, there were plenty of resources to run the project."
By the time the money ran out, University City was practically complete, at least to laymen. For Villanueva, architecture was alive and had to grow and adapt with the passage of time and the change of uses. It cost more to convince some artists to participate in a project financed by a dictatorship, than the dictatorship of the benefits of art. In the case of some Venezuelan creators, such as Jesús Soto, the refusal "was understandable," says Jaua, who did not want to link with the military government.
Others, like Miró, were simply in full creative fertility, with too much work to attend to any new assignment. In general, left-wing Europeans understood that the project itself was more transcendent than the origin of money. "The dictatorship will happen, but the work will remain," said Fernand Léger, criticized for contributing to the complex, in 1954, with a stained glass window located in the central library building.
Why can't we grow roses?
The permanence, on the other hand, has been a workhorse that has had to be removed almost daily since Villanueva died of Parkinson's disease. His daughter can count each of the times he has had to curb the creative impulses of rectors, teachers and students, ugly the neglect of the public and university administrations in maintenance or lower his arms before irreparable changes.
"One day, at a meeting of one of the conservation committees that had been at the university, a request came from a dean who wanted to plant rose bushes. We said no, and the dean was outraged at us, and incidentally the rector went He was also outraged with us. We had to explain to him that the design was not limited to the buildings, but that it was an integral project, of which the spaces, the corridors and the gardens were also part: chaguaramos, palms, green vegetation, that is how the gardens were from my father, "he says. "All the furniture in the Aula Magna was beautiful and they exchanged it for new furniture with horrible bad taste. A rector decided that my father lacked corridors and agreed to build new ones that have nothing to do with the project."
All in all, the integrity and authenticity of Villanueva's design were maintained, essential conditions for Unesco to declare it a World Heritage Site in 2000, coinciding with the centenary of Villanueva's birth. In view of the daily difficulties in understanding the importance of preserving the University City even today, it is hard to imagine how the architect managed to get away with it for two decades.
Maybe it was because of that ability to give the right answer or maybe because of their precarious command of Spanish. Villanueva was born to a Venezuelan father and was educated in France, first at the Liceo Condorcet and then at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Outside the academy, he became involved with the vanguard of that effervescent Paris. And he conquered what was later his wife, a Venezuelan woman who, she joked, had married him "because he spoke perfectly French," says Paulina.
Already in Venezuela, he returned to Paris in 1937 because he had made the Venezuelan flag for the universal exhibition, in which Spain presented the Republic flag. "My mother said that she spent time there with Sert, who in Venezuela was less interesting. There she also met Miró." Paulina Villanueva's memories of her father working begin when he was involved in the execution of the University's central complex. "He was like a priest of architecture: he worked from eight in the morning to 12 noon and from two to six in the afternoon, and when the hour came, he closed."
It is surprising that he managed this way, without nocturnality or outbursts of eccentric genius, not only to raise the University City, but to combine the project with his Projects and History of Architecture classes and with his work at the Banco Obrero, through which he made a a good number of social housing buildings, such as El Silencio or January 23.
"Getting ready is going to get fixed"
While these buildings have no maintenance problems, the current state of the university is, in the words of Paulina Villanueva, sad. "It survives thanks to the dedication of many people [related to the project] who remain working there. Every time time passes and maintenance work is not done, the university city deteriorates. And now with the pandemic, the university has been alone for several months, "he laments. "Concrete is not like stone, it is not eternal. The condition of this corridor has been delicate for quite some time. A diagnosis was made and then the maintenance that was due was not carried out: the drains were blocked and the waterproofing. Now the steel supports are damaged. "
Although she admits that an expert report is necessary to know if it is going to be possible to save or if the structure will have to be demolished to rebuild it, Paulina does not lose faith in the devil: "Getting ready is going to be fixed; you have to try to do it in the best possible way and with the right people, good engineers. "