Zonas de Caracas

NC-29

As part of the Cerro Piloto Program, in 1954, on 5 terraces northwest of the 1946 Urdaneta neighborhood unit, the Banco Obrero built a worker’s housing unit designed in its Projects Department, led by Carlos Raúl Villa­nueva (London, 1900, architect, Beaux Arts, Paris). The complex is organized in two areas –Lomas and El Amparo– where 2165 apartments rise in 12 multicellular high-rise slab-like buildings (1954, Guido Bermúmez), whose architectural reference is Le Corbu-sier’s housing unit: 15 floors, rectangular floor-plan, reinforced concrete structure with 6 transversal frames and 2 overhangs, 10 apartments per floor, an internal staircase, 2 elevators with stops every 3 floors, 2 exterior emergency staircases and 8 different types of apartment with 1 to 4 bedrooms. There is a lack of services and public areas, as, except for some parking lots, the following buildings included in the original project were not built: 4 preschools, a supermarket, auditorium and shops on the ground floor of the Lomas buildings; 1 preschool, grocery store and 2 parking lots for El Amparo. Streets that adapt to the topography grant access to the 12 multicellular high-rise slab buildings erected randomly with different solar orientation, whose imposing laminar volumes contrast to the one-story houses and 4-story buildings in adjacent Urdaneta, making this sector a constructed display of the architectural and urban experimentation conducted by the Banco Obrero in Catia.