Projects by Name

In 1959, the Venezuelan architects Ernesto Fuenmayor Nava and Manuel Sayago invited Breuer to work with them on an ambitious planning project for downtown Caracas. The architects raised four office towers on thick, concrete piers and set them within a pedestrian plaza. A pair of trapezoidal, folded concrete movie theaters harkened back to the Assembly Hall of the UNESCO headquarters complex and the Abbey Church of St. John. Covered market spaces, characterized by their barrel-vaulted roofs, completed the scheme. Breuer’s associate, Herbert Beckhard, moved to Caracas to oversee the project, but ground was never broken. The project was published in the June 1960 issue of Architectural Record, giving Breuer the lion’s share of the credit for the design and upsetting his South American collaborators.