The impact of oil on the traditional Maracaibo house: A look from the historical-urban analysis perspective

Abstract

The traditional residential architecture of Maracaibo has been known in the collective memory of Venezuelans as a symbol of identity and as a kind of enduring cultural image. It is an archetype considered by locals to be a model of their colonial architecture; while in academia, it is understood as an example of nineteenth-century modernism. This paper aims to argue that it was in the context of the twentieth-century oil exploitation and during the government of Vicencio Pérez Soto, President of Zulia State (1926-1936), when economic and politic conditions were generated that made viable, through ordinances, the image that is now recognized as its traditional architecture. In this study, the historical-urban method was applied, which in its interdisciplinary approach achieves the procedural rigor of using written sources together with the operations typical of urban analysis.