A lot of Urban Think Tank’s work focuses on the Caracas barrios. What have you learned?

While they are often great communities, the barrios are facing major problems. We are working in that area because it’s a great opportunity to really change the largest portion of the city. You could say we are documenting and trying to assist in how the barrio communities are being built in Caracas. We believe the barrios are highly experimental, and yet they present the proto-architecture of great urban forms. They are both ancient and modern, [sort of] a mix between an ancient village settlement and the modern metropolis.

The barrios have come this far without architects. Isn’t it possible that the communities could come up with solutions for infrastructure on their own?

The architecture critic Kenneth Frampton asked us the same thing: “Why do they need architects?” Fifty percent of Caracas is now built informally. Urban Think Tank works very closely with the members of the barrio communities because it is part of our city. One shouldn’t consider the barrios as something separate from the rest of the city. To not help, to not find a way to work with those living in the barrios, would be closing our eyes to one of the greatest urban challenges. Some people have said we romanticize the barrios. [But] we simply are not confirming the existing view of crime-infested slum areas. Our goal is to increase awareness in Caracas, as well as in the world, of the conditions of the barrios. There are some serious problems—security, water and sewage, electricity, access—but we can help in finding and implementing solutions. If that’s a romantic view, then we are hopelessly romantic architects.

Do you see examples of successful urban renewal anywhere in the world?

Successful urban renewal, in my opinion, is being done in the Netherlands. The Dutch are incredibly conscious of the wealth of their land; they don’t have a lot of it, so they have to maximize what goes on there. There are examples of areas where city planners have let the Dutch [architecture] offices follow a program where the design-ers are involved with the projects from the start. Rather than have a developer come in and focus on a dollar/square foot equation, the designers are there with the city planners figuring out how to best design the city.

What’s next for Urban Think Tank?

The future of Urban Think Tank is to bring the knowledge we’ve acquired from our work in Caracas and take it to other parts of the world. We see Urban Think Tank as a necessary organization that can connect the ideas in Venezuela to the so-called developed world, to connect the cultures and continents. Our latest project is what we call a “vertical gymnasium” for Spanish Harlem in New York (right). We want to take an open asphalt area at a public school and build a gymnasium, similar to one we designed in Caracas, where sports facilities and learning centers are stacked vertically and distributed within a simple steel structure, therefore maximizing the use of the land. This is the type of idea that we think, and hope, could be applied anywhere in the world.