Architecture+and+Urban+Planning

=**Architecture and urban planning.** =

Architects and urban planners have like a competition between them. For example, I´m studying architecture and I have friends that are studying urban planning and we tell each other jokes about our careers. Like an architect says to a urban planner “ go and paint your blueprints” or an urban planner says to an architect “ go and do a little house” or something like that! And even though, this is a joke between friends, the same thing has happened in the society.

It s true that architecture and urban planning are different careers, that have different demands, but it’s also true that they have a lot of things in common, even, I would say that one depends on the other one, and the two of them depend on people´s needs, and that’s the first thing that they have in common.



Architecture in his wider concept is the art of designing spaces where people can live a comfortable and happy life; on the other hand, urban planning is the art “of shaping the physical setting for life in cities, towns and villages.” Those cities are shaped by buildings designed by architects, streets designed by urban planners, parks designed by landscape architects and the most important of all, cities are shaped by people.

Without people architecture couldn´t exist and without buildings cities couldn´t exist, so urban planning couldn´t exist. It´s like a chain, and architecture and urban planning are like links of the chain, alone they don’t work, together they are strong.

I believe that the big difference between these two careers is that architecture designs in a smaller scale than urban planning, for example, an architect designs a house and an urban planner designs the residential set.

media type="file" key="arquitecture and urban planning.wav" = = =//**How does Caracas stand in terms of both, architecture and urban planning? **//=

Well, let’s see, Caracas it´s a very complicated city to analyze. In terms of architecture and urban planning, Caracas has some things right and other things not so right. The old Caracas was organized by grid patterns, but when the city started to grow this changed and the disaster began. In terms of architecture we can find some buildings like the ones of Villanueva that are architecture in its good expression, they are a pieces of art, but also we can find some buildings that were made just to create housing, and they weren’t conceived with the artistic part of architecture. media type="file" key="Caracas.wav"