Zonas de Caracas

JAC

In 1953, the International Basic Economy Corporation (IBEC) of Nelson Rockefeller, instructs the American architect Donald Hatch (who work at the Rockefeller Center in New York, before his arrival in Caracas in 1948), to design the first modern shopping center with supermarket, in the emerging residential suburb of Las Mer-cedes. The prototype, built first in Maracaibo (1954) and then repeated with slight variations in La Vega (1956-1958), was located on a triangular lot of 8,200 square meters, with a peripheric parking for 130 cars. The building of large steel and glass with two floors plus basement, was designed as a rectangular box with a cantilevered roof that shelters two sectors separated by a large double-height central hall. The commercial ground floor with 8 shops, was divided by a central corridor where an «american style» cafetería, ended in a terrace with a reflecting pool and a careful landscape. The basement, for the sale of furniture and household equipment, complemented the large shops windows visible from the outside by covered galleries located in the north and south facades. The offices were located upstairs. The modern supermarket of over 1,000 square meters for self service and 1,300 for deposits, in the second section, is accessible from the hall by ramps. The building today altered and deteriorated, was an attraction in modern Caracas promoting the «American way of life».