Caracas International Exhibition
Caracas, Venezuela, 1957 – 1961
Burle Marx Office
Landscape architect: Roberto Burle Marx
Associated architects: Maurício César Monte, Júlio César Pessolani Zavala, Fernando Tábora Pena and John Godfrey Stoddart and J. Maria de Araújo Souza
Botanist: Leandro Aristeguieta
Zoologist: Augusto Ruschi
Engineer: A. Brandt
Reform | 1980
Burle Marx Office
Landscape architect: Roberto Burle Marx
Associated architects: Haruyoshi Ono and José Waldemar Tabacow
Built over two years, East Park, in Caracas, Venezuela, was inaugurated in 1961. The 82-hectare area was previously occupied by the San José farm, where coffee and sugar cane were grown. In this project, Burle Marx worked collaboratively with a multidisciplinary team, including botanist Leandro Aristeguieta, Chilean architect Fernando Tábora Pena and English architect John Godfrey Stoddart. The park’s botanical collection has more than 130 species, including trees, palm trees, shrubs, herbaceous plants, aquatic plants and xerophytes, which represent Venezuela’s ecosystems, some of which are quite unusual and rare. The fauna is represented by mammals, birds, reptiles and fishes.
The wavy layout that delineates the patches of vegetation, the paths and the water mirrors with their islets are an unmistakable characteristic of Burle Marx’s work; he harmoniously integrated urban design, architecture and nature in a densely populated and developed city like Caracas. Through his work, Burle Marx contributed to raising awareness about the importance of vegetation and plants, giving populations in large cities the opportunity to live with a diversity of living beings, even in the midst of the urban centres characteristic of that time. With its transformation, the territory of East Park gained relevance in the Latin American scenario and encouraged the appreciation of the landscape, conservation and environment in Venezuela.
