How does a city go from being a Latin American powerhouse to extreme poverty in a contemporary environment? Caracas, Venezuela went, and is still going through, that very transition. Once a city of wealth, luxury, and unquestionable natural beauty, the identity of the city has morphed through socialism, greed, and power hungry dictatorships. Through my dissertation, I will compare the current architectural climate in Caracas with the artistic movement of magical realism, and begin to speculate how architecture and the role of the architect, in the city can influence the attitude of the people in order to transform itself. Caracas itself is a diverse city with two faces, the formal and the informal. Architects have used Caracas as an experimental playground, leaving a series of empty monumental formal structures lying dormant.
