ARCHITECTURE
Punta de Mata Affordable Housing. 1997
In my last year of architecture school, my team and I spent a semester living in the slum of Punta de Mata, an oil city, to replace precarious “rancho” housing with efficient facilities. We creatively reused oil-related industrial waste and local soil to build the houses. This initiative engaged various local communities, teaching them construction techniques and motivating them to build their own homes with reusable, recyclable, or locally found materials.
La Antena. Comunal Center. 1999
As a member of the design team, we worked on the physical restoration of the La Antena squatter settlement. We developed new infrastructure networks, converted main and secondary roadways, and created urban equipment for educational and sports recreation. Additionally, We renovated an abandoned façade of an old radio station into a community center, a child daycare center, and public spaces with a project to design urban furniture.
URBAN DESIGN
Barrio Slum San Miguel. La Vega. Caracas
In 1996, I participated in the preliminary designs for the physical upgrading of squatter settlements in La Vega. This project aimed to improve urban conditions through community cooperation, government support, private sector involvement, and international collaboration. San Miguel became an exemplary model, referenced in various courses, and contests, and featured in the Seventh Biennial of Havana (2000).
Barrio Slum Julian Blanco. Petare. Caracas.
Winning the “First Ideas Competition – General Urban Development Proposals for the Physical Outfitting of the Slums” allowed me to work for a year with the organized community. We performed a site analysis and created an urban schematic design, including 80 replacement housing units and a preliminary layout connecting the “José Félix Ribas”
FURNITURE DESIGN
Pantuche Chair. MAD Museum New York
Due to the political, social, and economic crisis in Venezuela, I had to shut down Barbarella and ECODAR, joining the professional diaspora. In this challenging period, I decided to upcycle part of our stock, including the iconic Panton chair. As a critical comment on Venezuela’s political crisis, I transformed the Panton chair into a symbol of the "Catuche" slum, blending its blueprint with human and artificial elements, both hand-carved and digitally rendered (BCN Fab Lab).
The resulting piece, Pan-tuche, was part of "New Territories: Arts, Craft, and Design in Latin America," curated by Lowery Sims. This exhibition started at New York's MAD Museum of Arts & Design and then traveled to the Museum of International Folk Art in New Mexico, the Craft & Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles, and the Museo Amparo in Mexico.
Holy Crap it s a Bucket. BID Madrid
This project consists of a series of poufs designed by reusing empty paint buckets for Barbarella. After years of use in Barbarella, no one realized they were made from waste materials. Until I gave the workshops in ECODAR and also gave the model to a group of architects, artists, and graphic and fashion designers to intervene. I also made my version, mimicking nature with stones collected from the beach. The project highlights humor and playfulness, transforming everyday objects into creative and sustainable design pieces. These "cuñetes" were featured in the Ibero-American Design Biennial (BID) in Madrid (2002).
NI TANGRAM Caracas
As part of my design work for the Chacao Cultural Center, I created Ni-Tangram, the first in a line of furniture designs that addressed the center's lack of storage space. This artistic installation of playful furniture was built on the foundation of interactive design. Inspired by mathematical puzzles, the modular pieces can be assembled into different configurations, allowing users to play with them. The design solves their storage challenges as it maximizes every space, no matter how small, and provides alternate seating for the amphitheater. Additionally, I designed dressing rooms and other furniture.
EVENT DESIGN
Founder and Creative Director of Barbarella, a platform for innovative solutions towards rethinking social events through artistic and sustainable collaborations. Barbarella conceptualized and produced contemporary eco-designed furniture and personalized set designs. Barbarella’s creative force and sustainable values proved to be a trailblazing project that positioned the company at the top of the market in Venezuela. “Barbarella incorporated original pieces designed by Carolina as the tangram, tripa, tube lamp, and many other designs, bringing the concept of upcycling furniture into Caracas’ creative social scene”.
