Zonas de Caracas

IGV-1

The communications building, at the west end of Rector’s square, completes the triad of buildings that contain and form the square. It is divided into two bodies: the office building –a three story horizontal prism whose receded façade generates a covered gallery for access to the building, showing the structure and protecting the east façade from the sun–; and a closed box that formerly housed a large telephone infrastructure. This body, with rib-like frames, is linked to the larger volume through a roof. At the north end of the east façade, Villanueva used a marquee as an element indicating access, but in this case suspended from the building’s structure by metallic turnbuckles. The work Untitled by André Bloc can be seen as an abstract mural inside. The west façade has regular openings framed in openwork blocks that protect from the sun. The colorful mural A static element in five positions by Oswaldo Vigas (1926), located on the closed box, is an artistic element that is part of a larger group of works that help build «movements», as if Villa­nueva’s idea of the synthesis of the arts were a musical score.