A backward modernity

The city of Puerto Ordaz, located in Bolívar State, Venezuela, was considered the best planned city in Venezuela and even South America almost from its founding. This development was largely focused between the 1970s and 2000s, a period in which the city grew rapidly, encompassing large buildings with modern designs. Many of these buildings are photographed in this publication. All of them were located in the Alta Vista neighborhood, where high-impact projects were developed. However, everything came to a halt when the country's economy entered a crisis phase. This progress halted, and new buildings and architectural projects for the city were virtually nonexistent.

Here we're not talking so much about how imposing and tall a building can be, but rather about its design above all. That's what I perceive when I look at a work of architecture, where I perceive the shapes, the geometry, and the harmony with its spaces and surroundings. So I've assimilated this with many of the existing buildings in this city, which, despite being built a long time ago, have a modern look and design. In some cases, there are some newer buildings, but I'd say they may be around 10 years old, while right now, new projects of great importance to the city are beginning to be developed, making it possible for it to come back to life.

One aspect I like about Puerto Ordaz is that it's a city that still has plenty of room for construction. In addition to having large streets and avenues, compared to other cities in Venezuela, I've always seen it as better organized, and with the adaptation of its respective spaces, it's almost perfect. But in reality, not everything can be perfect. There are many plots of land in the city that are unsuitable for construction, and for that reason, you often see many abandoned spaces with large, deep holes. It's been that way for a long time, or at least I've perceived it that way.

Today, as I always do when I walk around the city, I try to notice every detail of these buildings and take photos, creating a better perspective to capture what I'm seeing. From my perspective, it's simply spectacular and beautiful. It's one of the things I always appreciate about a city, and even more so about Puerto Ordaz. I always say it's a compact and comfortable city, and it still lacks the chaos of big cities, where organization is destroyed and everything can be so crowded that it's overwhelming, destroying the harmonious space that should exist in a place where we can all coexist between the environment and your own living space.

That's why it's so important to capture these images as a sample of what the city where you live is like, and to partially tell the story of all this and try to understand the figuration of these constructions that are determined by a series of essential rules for architecture, but it's also a lack of that creativity in highlighting those designs that create harmony and beautify the city, as well as the relationship that one has with photography in capturing each of those forms.

All photographs are my own.