Final+Project

= __**Final Project : Venezuela is Unique**__ =

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I’m Victoria Pascal, student of urban planning at the University Simon Bolivar and I will present this project that consist in how the combination of different elements, like color and light, make the Venezuelan landscaping different from other countries. In this country, we have mountains in Mérida, forest in La Gran Sabana, deserts in Coro, beaches along the north coast, plains in Apure, the urban areas in Caracas and other cities including Valencia, Barquisimeto and Maracaibo and rural áreas at the principal cities of the plains. All these places have different conditions that make each one of them unique in the national geography, because of this we have many options to enjoy in this country any moment in the year.

Caracas, the city of red roofs, now turned into a city of high buildings, all down the protection of the Caracas guardian, El Ávila. In the cities we can see how almost all buildings have at least fifteen floors, promoting the vertical circulation; even when Caracas hasn't skyscrapers, it makes Parque Central the tallest building in the city’s, having sixty floors. The horizontal circulation is given for the highways that allow the travel along the city, connecting the west with the east; the main highways in Caracas are Boyaca Avenue and the Francisco Fajardo highway, therefore these highways have in particular moments a vertical circulation that is defined by the distributors. In the cities the rhythm is defined by the organization of them, for example in periphery there is houses of two floors as much, and as it approaches to residential and commercial centers the buildings gain more height responding to the activities that take place in there. And this height refers to scale, because the buildings must indicate the characteristics of a place just to see them, it means that where you see the tallest building i t conducts business around taking lower buildings that are multifamily residential use and so on.  Due to the combination of uses in the city, much traffic is generated, and this problem generates many noises that disturbs the life of the citizen and giving to Caracas the aspect of a metropolis because all the cars that circulate daily for the streets. For this reason, at nights we find big car congestions in all the avenues, advertising and the light of the buildings  that makes the city looks brighter than it really is. The Caracas subway, which is one of the most important means of transport, is used by millions of persons along the day to go to their jobs and schools, and at the end of the day to go to their homes. In this space, every station has a different combination of color to identify it easily, many stations have artificial lights, but there are others, because of their design have natural light that provides to the user a different experience. The neighborhoods are an important element in the Venezuelan geography, because they are in all the country, no matter the importance of the city, they are very colorful because of the combination in the bricks and the paint of some houses, they have a building material with rustic texture. The houses in these areas are built according the terrain contour, which can be verified by the aerial view of these neighborhoods. About the vertical circulation, we have stairs in almost all the neighborhoods, which allow the access to the houses, are approximately forty floors, sometimes more, sometimes less. Alleys represent the horizontal circulation, these are to narrow and dangerous because of their dimensions. Nevertheless, Venezuela is not only cities; the country has many natural areas where find a village is almost impossible, like the Gran Sabana, where green is the king of colors. Where in all a vegetable plain they raise the Tepuyes, breaking with the monotonous vision of the savannah, a magical place in which the most minimum animal noise can listen and even the sound of the waterfalls upon falling. In this place,  the texture is defined by trees, which are found in the savannah, providing a uniform view of the landscape  . Due to everything in here is big, the Tepuyes, the rivers, the trees, the insects, the visitors have the feeling of being in front of the God’s work, the visitors feel tiny. One of the most important elements in here is the Salto Angel, which is the highest waterfall in the world, and has a combination of colors, lights and heights.  About the plains, there are too plains, for this reason the sunsets in there are beautiful, because the color scheme generated in the sky. The combination of the water with the ground produces a mirror effect giving the sensation that the space is bigger than it really is. The plains, to be flat sites provide a sense of vastness because the horizon is not reached discern no difference in the field, having always the same landscape of plain, so high that you lose the scale of things, because there are no differences in the place and therefore everything is held horizontally. Another effect of this plain is that the sounds doesn’t have interruptions and therefore effectively travel, arriving with no alterations to any place.  Different animals like birds, horses and cattle, make the differences in the colors. Other landscape are the deserts where the sand is the principal element, giving to the place a brown color. Dunes are the elements that define the space providing the rhythm; while the texture is soft to the view and elements like the circulation is not defined, because of the continuous change in the dunes. In the other hand, we have the snowy mountains, located in the west of the country. In there, due to the snow the space looks blue, the element that provides a little color to the landscape are the plants when they are flowering. Because the stone, the texture is rough and when the mountains are very snowy, t  <span style="-moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; font-size: 12pt;">hey look soft. Also in the mountains the echo is strong because the chasms between each mountain. <span style="-moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; font-family: Calibri;">

Finally we have the beaches where the fishers gives the colorful to the space, but not everything is in their hands, the water color, almost transparent, that provides the effect of the coast is never deep. The light in the beach is very strong because the sun is all day long in the sky, like punishing the people, other thing is that the sea the space looks so big and infinite, in some places the beaches have mountains around, modifying the perception of the flat. <span style="-moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; font-size: 12pt;"> About the project, I think it was very interesting to describe the elements of every landscape that makes Venezuela unique, because all the elements that I had to include in the description of these, because when we see a landscape we don’t think about how is the lighting or the acoustics, we just appreciate the space and the elements that the nature offers. For this reason, I really liked the activity and it was a way to discover new elements in the places that I already knew.