Carlos Raúl Herrea GrossmannProfessional & Academic works

CRHG

Professional Works

The following works are a selection of the projects in which I have collaborated during my professional career.

ProyectosParque Hábitat c.a.

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Proyectos Parque Hábitat c.a. is an architecture firm located in Caracas Venezuela that develops urban - architectonic projects. It specializes in large low cost residential projects. It also develops commercial projects and remodeling projects as well.

Thew mission of this firm is to develop residential complexes in which open public space is a key factor in order for the inhabitants to expand beyond their dwells. Sports courts, pools, small plazas, are some of the strategies adopted in order to achieve this objective.

The following are the projects in which I have been participated.

Phase 1 Phase 2

This project is located in a suburb east from the city of Caracas.

This is a “government protected” residential develop-ment built by a private developer. In total it has 198 de-tached units, and was finished in 2009. Because it is a “social housing” project, the major challenge of this project was to develop a residential unit that could meet with the expense power of the market target. In order to address this challenge, the house is designed to be constructed in two phases. The first phase is com-posed by the gorund floor, in which there are two bed-rooms, two full bathrooms, kitchen, dinner and living room. One side of the unit, to the front is reserved to build a parking space for one car. The second phase has multiple variations. On the first place it can be devel-oped a a separate one bedroom apartment, with an independent acces. The other two variations contem-plate the expansion of the house, which aims to build two more bedrooms (growing from a two to a four bed-room unit) or the second option is to create a small home-office/studio space.

About the urban design, this project aims to create a series of small parks in which the residents can perform leisure activities. Also there are two sport facilities for the residents.

Residential development [Parque Hábitat Castillejo]

Mixed use development [Parque Hábitat El Encantado]This development is located in a suburb close to the city of Caracas. The project combines a commercial (Southern part of the site) and a residen-tial site to the north. The residential development has 480 apartment units distributed in 22 buildings. The centre of the project was envisaged to be a large open, green and community space with parks, sports facili-ties and other amenities. For project for the commercial site is a small shopping centre. This building designed to accomodate basic services for the surrounding communities.

To meet with the stakeholders expectations, for this project there were developed two different types of buildings within the same structure and facades. The bigest challenge was to increase the number of apartments that could be built in the same building. This led to design more efficient units that could meet the local building standards, as well as the market demand.

The first layout, type A, has four units per level, with three different types of apartments. One, two or three bedroom apartments, from 55m2 to 85m2 approximately. The second layout, type B, has six units per level. It only has two kind of units, one and two bedroom apartments around 57m2 per unit. The reason to develop a building under this concept was to improve the flexibility of the building and project’s profit. In order to be able to develop such as a flexible building it was necessary to carefully study how the different systems (electricity, drinking water, waste-water) should be designed and built, in order to avoid interferences as well as to improve the systems performance in order to reduce the building’s costs.

This strategy of improving the flexibility of the building’s layout and maximizing the number of apartments that could be sold, turned out to exceed the client’s expectations.

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Shopping Centre [Comercial Site]

Location Plan

Ground Level Plan

First Level Plan

Second Level Plan Secccio CC

Multi dwelling housing building [Parque Hábitat el Milagro]

This project is located in the eastern city of Maracaibo in Venezuela. This city has the highests temeratures averages during the year. This led to take particular atention to improve the solar protection on the facades.

The location of the city of Maracaibo is in the north of Venezuela, next to a large salt water lake. The building’s site is located close to the west coast of the lake. That was an advantage due to the average wind direction comes from the East, which means that in most part of the year the wind brings within it cool air from the water mass.

The building is twelve stories high. The lower two first levels were designed to work as a private parking lot. On top of this there is a central plaza, which is the main public space of the building. On the same level, to the east, there is a terrace that complements the building’s communi-tary spaces. From this level up, there are ten levels with twenty eight units per level, to sum up a total of two hundred eighty units, divided in five unit types.

This project is in the final phase of it’s construction.

Unit A Unit B Unit B1 Unit C Unit C1

Parque Hábitat El Ingenio.

Due to the size, 980 dwellings, this residential development is designed to be built in four stages.

In order to achieve the goal of building more than 750 dwellings in the same project, there was a lot of time researching, modeling, prototyping and evaluating different approaches to optimize the housing unit. The result of this work was an important improvement of the building system. The material waste was reduced, and the construction process was systematize to increase the building speed.

There are two types of units. The first one is arround the 65m2 in a split level unit. The ground level hosts the public spaces of the house, while in the upper level are the two bedrooms and one bathroom. The second unit type is about 95m2 splited in thre levels. As well as the first type the ground level hosts the kitchen, dinner room and living room, while the two upper levels hosts four bedrooms and two bathrooms.

The houses are aligned in a wat that each unit has two entrences. One side goes to a lane, which is conected to the centre park, while the other ones conects with the inner street and the parking space.

Common Plan / Section

Site Plan

Ground Level PlanFirst Level Plan

Multi dwelling housing building [Caraballeda Suites]

This project is located in the in the town of Caraballeda, which is down to the coast about 30 km from the city of Caracas. This makes it one of the best weekend get away location for the city dwellers.

The project was design to meet with two different kind of buyers. On the first place, it had to meet with the people who were looking for a leisure property to spend weekends and hollydays. Also it had to take into account a share of the market which involves the local inhabitants who rather commute to the city and live close to the coast. In order to do so, the project was conceived with units flexible enough to meet with both demands. Also it offers amenities as a marina, which is also available to the general public.

The building is ten stories high. The lower two first levels were designed to work as a private parking lot. The third level wors as a central plaza with the main amenities and public spaces of the building. From this level up, there are 7 levels with a total of 48 units, and the last level alocates 28 split level apartments, to sum a total of 76 apartments.

Pent House Upper Level

Pent House Lower Level

Levels 1 - 6

Site Plan

Site Plan

Business Centre [Banco Occidental de Descuento]

This project is located in the in the city of Maturin, in the East side of Venezuela. This city is know to be the headquartes of different oil compa-nyes which works in this area.

The owner of the site is a private bank. Their expectations were to build a business centre that could accomodate their regional offices, as well as some commercial-office space to lease, a convention centre and a com-mercial use ground level.

The orientation of the building site only allows the development of a building that is alingned in a north-south direction, which means that the main facades will be exposed to the east and west sun all year long. In order to address this issue, the eastern and western facades should be treated according to their own conditions in order to improve the comfort inside the building.

Following are presented two proposals to the project.

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Business Center BOD Maturín.

H2G Arquitectos c.a.

H2G Arquitectos c.a. is an architecture firm located in Caracas Venezuela that develops residential and commercial architecture projects.

This studio was founded in 2005 after I obtained my degree as Bachelor in Architecture in Venezuela. The studio specializes in residential projects (single & Multi Familiar). It also has participated in interior renovations of commercial spaces, such as offices and stores.

The following are the projects developed by this su-tudio.

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Camirra’s Residence.

Lower level Plan View

Upper level Plan View

Easte Facade

Section AA Section BB

Roca Fuerte Residence. [House Renovation]

Site Plan [Original State]

Master Bedroom + Lounge Office + Gym

Gym

Lounge

Master Bedroom

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Room Plan [Original State]

Section AA

Section BB

Section CC

Section DDRoom Plan [Proposal]

Cerro Verede Renovation [Interiorism Renovation.]

Offices + Bar [Lobby service spaces]

Concert hall service spaces

Concert HallBackstageStage

Lobby

Concert Hall Rehabilitation.This project was a proposal to renovate a old cinema theatre and transform it into a concert hall for the “Sistema Nacional de Orquestas Juveniles e Infantiles de Venezuela”. Unfortunately this project was only developed to the preliminary stage.

The main idea of this rehabilitation was to build a concert hall next to the offices of the Foundation for small concerts and plays. For this was necessary to create a lobby capable of adaptate to different kind of events. As the lobby the concert hall itself, has kind of the same principle, to adapt to diferent kind of events, from a single violin play to an orchestra concert. It was necessary to create all the backstage spaces as well as the service spaces needed to perfom these kind of events.

Section - [Proposal]

Lower Level[lobby - Bar - Offices]

Upper Level[Concert Hall - Backstage]

Academic Works

The following presentation is a selection of projects de-veloped at an academic level.

The objective aims to rehabilitate an existing building taking into consideration energy efficiency concepts as well as passive bioclimatic design strategies. To be able to do this it is necessary separate the project in differnt stages.

First it is necessary to evaluate the work place. This analysis allows to understand how the area works and which are their inhabitants needs. The indicators which can be studied are buildings accesibility improvement, increase vegetated areas, analyze motorized traffic and acces to public transportation. Besides this Ürban performance”indicators, it is also necesary to studi the work place with a climatic perspective. In this case indicators such as the sun-path and the buildings shadows affect the public space and the other near bildings, as well as how prevailing winds run trough the open spaces and how does they collaborate with the natural ventila-tion of the dwelling units. Rainfall volumes are very important, due to in Madrid rainfall levels are not high. Finally, and to end this stage, an Bioclimatis Analysis trough the Olgiay Climatic Diagram is performed to see which pasive design strategies should be used while the project is developed.

After ending with the analysis stage and having collected all the data, we proceed to select a building to develop the project.

master degree project.

This project is located in the periferic neig-borhood of San Blas, Madrid.

This kind of developments was part of one of the many urban plans that the city devel-oped back in the seventee’s. The objective of these plans was to promote low-cost housing projects.

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Location

Bioclimatic Analysis

Sun-path analysis

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Winds diagrams

Rainfall diagram

Free + Flex = Strategy for space rehabilitation

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THE FACADE. 1 building. 4 visions.

This project has as its point of origin a personal concern which is that trough the last three decades the facade of the buildings have become the result of the functional distribution of the space instead of being an element to be designed as well.

Throughout history, the facade appart of having a functional roll (protection from the enviroment) it has had a meaning rol. Through it the different stages and movements of architecture history are represented.

An historic timeline allow us to understand the significative value of the facade through time, and at the same time to question how it is being used in the present.

“... Is it really the result of the functional distribution of spaces or it can be a part to be thinked and de-signed with the same intensity?...”

This work looks foward to investigate the value of the facade at the present time. To achieve this, an observa-tion of different buildings types and the stablishment of different categories, plus an analisys of these building types to discover how the facade is being used in each and everyone of the cases.

This observation and analysis process will results in the creation of four categories: the Walkthrough facade, the Digital-cromatic facade, the transformation facade and the Appearence facade. Each one of this catego-ries will be taken into consideration at the design stage of the proyect.

In order to develop the building, I decided to continue with the last semester project. This left an area for future development.

Instead of following the convetional design process, I decided to take the facade as the point of origin. As the facade design evolves, there appear diferent hints, which will be used to define the possible use of the internal spaces, in other words, the quality of the space will be determined by the behaviour of the facade and the type of inside - outside relation that i would determine.

bachelor degree project.

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The Facade timeline

Essential fundaments of the form in architec-ture.

Fonatti, Franco.

Outer Space. “... the outer space exists a priori [...] it is defined as the space in which human activities, in contrast to the interior space, are minimized. (August Sarnitz).

Interior Space. ”... the interior space exists only with the existence of the human being [...] the built space is artificial. The influences of the environment are eliminated by the protective function of the interior space. The transition between the outer and the inner space, according to the influences of the environ-ment, are resolved according to the different levels of altitude” (August Sarnitz)

Actual condition of the Space.

Outer Space. Privatization of the outer space ... inte-rior condition of the public space ... the outer space as a consequence of the construction of the inner space ... regain the outer space ... seek a new public - technological & informative space.

Interior Space. Informative space ... it emphasizes the use of the interior space over the outer space

The Facade as an Enveloping “... the surface encloses, it is the element that defines an object, difference between interior & ex-terior. The surface defines the appearance of the objects. A dif-ferent arrangement in space of the same elements can shape a new space. The two dimensional condition of the surface denies the possibility of containing space itself ...”

The facade as a space “... The envelope also determines the look or the appearance of ob-jects, it implies to surround an object, and it can also determine its limits, but as the develop-ment of various surfaces in space, part of it can become a space in itself, a transitional space between the exterior and the interior” [...] “... the enclo-sure, having the possibility of creating space in itself, estab-lishes a space - content area - outside relationship through a space and not by a two-dimensional element that is not necessarily contained in it, and could create uncertainty in the interior - exterior relationship..."

The Interior Facade. This type of enclosure separates and connect at the same time an interior space with an outer contained space.

The facade and the meaning.

Through the facade the architecture is related to both the environment and the user simultane-ously. At the same time it expresses intentions and it has many meanings as well. “... Architec-ture comunicates to those who observe it for what it has been made, so it’s main meaning is it’s use ...”

From here it is possible to talk about a dual role in architecture of the facade as a means of ex-pression. The first one as an utilitarian function, which expresses the buildingss use. In second place it is a symbolic rol, which expresses ideas and concepts. So, “... the symbolic value of the architecture it is not only in in the building itself and how it relates with others, but with the build-ing and those who inhabit it...”

Facade - Content. Responds to the own qualities of the space, without taking in consideration the use of it ... outside-inside & inside-inside rela-tionships.

Facade - Form. Responds to a compositive-plastic condition ... formal & material exploration in order to transform how it looks.

Facade - Function. Responds to how the spase is used ... the facade as the result of the functional organization of the interior space.

The space as concept. The Facade. (External parameter of the building)

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The Facade Matrix.

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URBAN DESIGN. Building the public space.

The parameters that rule the open space are very diferent from the ones which prevail in the interior. The pedestrians, the vehicules, the flows (with thier densities and intensities) are some off the factors to take into consideration at the moment to design.

To begin with this projetc, first is necesary to anal-ize the work place. In this case it is going to be a very important urban corridor in the city of Caracas, Venezuela. The objective of this analysis is to show a series of indicators in order to adress the effort in a more efficient way. After the anlysis, one of the identifided placeces will be chosen to develop a public space, according to the needs of the place.

The Boulevard del Cafetal” is an important road axys within the city of Caracas. This axys conects many residential zones with the rest of the city. The main needs of it are: Recover the walking con-dition of the boulevard, provide the same number of of roadlanes along the whole route.

The public space to be developed will be a plaza. This plaza will be compesed by three parts, a pedes-trian border, a low intensity zone and a high inten-sity zone. The pedestrian border consist in the inclusion of the sidewalk into the plaza, at this moment the sidewalk becomes part of the plaza without loosing it’s movement space condition. The low intensity zone is conformed by a vegetal border, which as a park allows the public to read, rest, play games, etc. The high intensity zone is a skate park. It is located in the center of the plaza and it sepa-rates from the the rest of plaza at the moment it’s depresed. Another part to be taken into consider-ation is that a zone of the site is left empty. This zone will be left ti be developed with the construc-tion of a building. This one could be a cultural or a comercial building.

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Street Transversal Section

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