architecture & utopia, culture & solidarity?

Parque Central, Complex Teresa Cereno, Hotel Hilton Caracas
To celebrate the anniversary of the failed coup attempt in April 2002, Parque Central, a cultural district built in the 70s is the urban environment for the conference on solidarity with Bolivarian Revolution 12.-14. April 03.

Speakers like Ignazio Ramonet from Le Monde Diplomatique contextualized the obstacles which the Venezuelan process of social transformations is facing within a wither global framework of new imperialism, neo liberalism and their implicit but increasing politics of oppressions.
Emphazising the necessity of building international networks of solidarity.
Referents from Chile, Columbia, Venezuela added to and affirmed these necessities. Workshops on media and the constitution repeated the importance to focus on these means and forces in creating new visions and options within processes of democratization.

Joining the lectures, workshops and screenings and spending several days in that architectural environment we noticed a striking shift in its perception.The ideology of 70s architecture -- the utopian- machine-like-slabs (blocks) of the appartmentbuildings, the international-style-like Hilton, the scultpture-like cultural representation of Teatro Teresa Cereno -- got flooded, contrasted and lifted by a huge crowd of people, which seemed to create a collective effort to overcome the still limitating residues of an out-dated ideology, but -- strangely enough -- they did resignify architectural form.
We compiled a series of images for re_reading architecture and utopia.