The architecture firms of Kunckel Associates and Stefan Gzyl joined forces under the Glocalstudio platform to develop their entry to the recently completed ideas competition for La Carlota park in Caracas, Venezuela. They propose that the new park is an opportunity for a lot more than supplying a quantifiable amount of park space: they understand it as an opportunity for the (re)foundation of the city. The park will become the city’s new vital nucleus, a space from which to (re)conquest and (re)claim a preexisting and often hostile territory. In a city in which nature is in constant decline and hardly available as public space, the 100 hectare military airfield site constitutes a unique chance for a metropolitan-scale park in the very heart of the city. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The metaphor of the (re)foundation, however, does not imply tabula rasa but aims at reconnecting reality with possibility, recognizing that some things should not only be better, but fundamentally different. In this sense, the new park should become an agent of change, positively promoting a new way of relating to the city as a whole. The first act of appropriation of a space now foreign and excluded from the city will be the elimination of all physical barriers that isolate it from the city. This date will be marked and become a new anniversary in Caracas’s history. The city will be not only be witness but participate in its transformation. The urban dweller will partake in both the park’s growth and the diffusion of nature beyond its borders; a process that we propose is key to reactivate a sense of belonging and identification with the city.
