Concept
Carlos Raúl Villanueva Astoul (May 30, 1900 – August 16, 1975) was a Venezuelan modernist architect. Raised in Europe, Villanueva went for the first time to Venezuela when he was 28 years old. He was involved in the development and modernization of Caracas, Maracay and other cities across the country. Among his works are El Silencio Redevelopment which included 7797 apartments and 207 shop premises and the Ciudad Universitaria, the main campus of the Central University of Venezuela. The Campus was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in the year 2000. Villanueva was born in the city of London on May 30, 1900. He was the son of Carlos Antonio Villanueva and Paulina Astoul from a family originally from Valencia, Spain who had settled in Venezuela in the 18th century. His father was sent as an envoy from Venezuela to the Exposition Universelle of 1889 in Paris where he met Paulina Astoul and married her in 1893. A few years later, in 1896, he was appointed Consul General of Venezuela in England by the government of Joaquín Crespo. Carlos Raúl was born four years later near the Venezuelan Consulate and was the youngest of the five children of the family. In the following years his family moved back to Paris, where he received his basic schooling at the Lycée Condorcet. Later on he moved with his family to Málaga, Spain, until 1919 when he returned to Paris. In 1922, following the footsteps of his brother Marcel, Carlos Raúl was admitted to the Second Class of the Department of Architecture of the École des Beaux-Arts and entered the workshop of Gabriel Héraud. In 1925 he entered the First Class of the Department of Architecture and worked closely with León Joseph Madeline. During that time he collaborated on a project for a Hôtel d'ambassade a construire dans un pays d'Extreme Orient with another student of Héraud's workshop, Roger-Leopold Hummel, which won the Second prize of the Grand Prix de Rome in 1928.
