Espacios de Paz, spaces for peace in Venezuela

Espacios de Paz, a 6-week workshop in Venezuela, where Venezuelan and international architects worked at the same time in five different communities to design new spaces – spaces of peace in tough environments.



One workshop, six weeks, five architecture teams, five projects for public spaces. These are the numbers of a participatory architecture experience for communities that wanted to do something about the violence occurring on a daily basis.





Led by Venezuelan firm, PICO Estudio, five different spaces were designed and built together with the locals, to set up new opportunities and regenerate social interaction. A person-friendly form of architecture, because it meets the specific needs of the people it is designed for – and by – involving them in the drive for active and positive change.





Each work team, composed of architects from Venezuela and from other countries, members of the community, students and volunteers spent one week on the design and four weeks building; the last week was dedicated to checking the results: locally focused actions, in a kind of urban acupuncture (like explained by Finnish architect Marco Casagrande), and all their positive potential emerges because they are actually born from their environment.





So, instead of the classic non-places like landfills and abandoned plots of land, we can find a basketball court, or great places for community and social events, where locals are invited to get together, to engage, to interact, all in the name of…peace.

Comisión Presidencial del Movimiento por la Paz y la Vida
Directed by: PICO Estudio
Architectural collectives
Abono / Venezuela
Al Borde / Ecuador
AXP Arquitectura Expandida / Colombia
HSF Hábitat Sin Fronteras / México
Independiente / Venezuela – España [Andrea Stanko Wolf + Elena de Oleza Llobet]
Oficina Lúdica / Venezuela
PGRC Plataforma Gestión Residuos de Ciudad / Venezuela
PICO Proyecto de Interés Comunal / Venezuela
PKMN pacman / España
TXP Todo por la Praxis / España
439 Estudio Arquiurbano / Venezuela
Communities
Petare, La Y 5 de Julio / Caracas, Distrito Capital Pinto Salinas
Las 3 Marías / Caracas, Distrito Capital La Florida
Los Mangos / Valencia, Estado Carabobo El Chama
La Carabobo / Mérida, Estado Mérida Capitán Chico
Santa Rosa de Agua / Maracaibo, Estado Zulia
Artistic Production
Comando Creativo + PICO Estudio
Year: 2014