Over five million people live in Caracas. Venezuela’s capital spreads along the Guaire River beneath the massive Cerro El Avila mountain range, which separates the city from the Caribbean Sea. The country was once one of the fastest-developing in the world, thanks to its abundance of natural resources, particularly oil which was discovered in the 1920s, and it quickly became a hub of money and power in the region. Like other Latin American countries, Venezuela experienced national and cultural emancipation in the early 20th century. Many European immigrants settled there, discovering a wealth of business opportunities. During the 1950s, construction boomed under the rule of dictator Marcos Evangelista Pérez Jiménez and numerous international architects flocked to Caracas, including Richard Neutra and Gio Ponti. Even regime change didn’t hinder the flourishing of Venezuelan Modern architecture; Jiménez was overthrown in 1958 and during the 1960s and early 1970s, democracy brought relative stability to everyday life, allowing a new generation of architects to begin shaping the cityscape. The 1966 special issue of Life magazine called Caracas the city of the future.
During the same decade, this important second generation of Venezuelan Modernist architects began practicing, including the brothers Jesús and Oscar Tenreiro. ‘My older brother, Jesús, who was studying architecture at Universidad Central de Venezuela and was in his final year, had a very important influence on me,’ says Oscar, now 87, about the seminal figure who would go on to design the Unesco-protected university campus in Caracas, among other projects. ‘He introduced me to the student atmosphere of those years, which was very appealing. One day I decided to follow in his footsteps. I began as a student at our School of Architecture in 1955. In those years, Venezuela was opening itself wholeheartedly to modernity. Brazil was pointing the way. The work of architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva opened our eyes.’
Today, Oscar still lives in his Brutalist house on Carretera de Alto Hatillo, a hilly road in southeast Caracas. His residence, called Los Aromos (the name was bestowed by his wife as a homage to fragrant acacias), was initially constructed in 1962 under the enormous influence of Le Corbusier. ‘[He] was a universal man. His thinking, which he systematically tried to transmit to others, captivated me,’ explains the Venezuelan architect. ‘So did his architecture. Ronchamp Chapel touched my soul.’
The influence of Le Corbusier’s postwar work, characterised by the extensive use of concrete, is imprinted in Los Aramos. Constructed around a ground-floor concrete pavilion, with typical sunshades, cement bricks and vertically divided windows inspired by the Swiss/Frenchman’s rhythmical windows at Sainte-Marie de La Tourette Monastery in France, the house has a further Crow-like twist in its use of splashes of primary colour against raw concrete surfaces, and (originally at least) in an extensive roof garden. His was not the only influence: ‘While it is true that in my work on Los Aromos the incorporation of characteristic elements of Le Corbusier’s work had essentially guided my search, the presence of Louis Kahn is also very strong,’ notes Oscar. Despite these powerful allusions, the work is also highly individual and place-specific. In 1967, when Oscar was just 29, Los Aromos received the Single-family Housing Prize at the Venezuelan Architecture Biennale.
The building does not look the same today. Los Aromos was always an evolving project, changing over the years in response to different needs and styles, and in tune with the surrounding city. In 1975, Oscar added a superimposed wide metal roof protecting most of the building against the sun and giving the house a High Tech aesthetic. He has also refashioned the roof garden into a patio, blurring the boundaries between indoors and out. Two other smaller buildings have been erected next to the house during the past two decades: the guest house and studio reflect the mothership’s architecture with the extensive use of bright colours, while ceramic mosaics introduce a Postmodern sensibility. This multicultural and stylistic crossover is an approach typical to Oscar Tenreiro, an architect whose vision continues to expand.
