Wood+and+Glass

**The use of glass in architecture in Caracas ** Caracas is a city full of buildings, cars, and people. As the Capital of Venezuela, Caracas is where the new tendencies are first known in contrast to the rest of the country, therefore, in years before, the city had a great development in architecture, urban planning, new highways and many more aspects thanks to the good economic that the country used to have. The modern architecture came very fast to Caracas, we found some examples in Carlos Raul Villanueva works, such as the Ciudad Universitaria, and then many other buildings came after trying to prove the high standards of the architecture in this tropical city. Nowadays we found many buildings that continuous to prove the development of the city, using, for example, the glass in the facades, symbol of the new era. However, it is no so clever to use it in this type of climate conditions because of the strong solar beams. The Crystal Park is an example of a building covered completely with glass, it may looks beautiful, but there were some consequences about this decision: the East Park, located in front of the building, suffer because of the reflection of the solar beams, killing the living grass and drying it up. The Cubo Negro also suffers consequences about the using of glass in the recovering of the building, heating the interior spaces thanks to the black glass and the tropic climate. That’s why the architects must be careful about the using of curtain glass walls or glass recovering in Caracas, it is important to be aware of the weather and the sun.