José Fructoso Vivas Vivas (21 January 1928 – 23 August 2022), also known as Fruto Vivas, was a Venezuelan architect. His best known works are the Venezuelan Pavilion in Expo Hanover 2000, Táchira Club in Caracas, Venezuela, the Holy Redeemer church in San Cristóbal, Venezuela, and the Museum of Modern Art in Caracas, Venezuela.

Personal life

Vivas was born 21 January 1928 in

La Grita La Grita is a town in the north west of Táchira state, Venezuela. It has a population of 80.000. Located in an Andean valley, La Grita has a beautiful natural setting and fertile land. The town includes colonial style houses and open plazas. Th ...

Táchira Táchira State ( es, Estado Táchira, ) is one of the 24 states of Venezuela. The state capital is San Cristóbal. Táchira State covers a total surface area of and as of the 2011 census, had a population of 1,168,908. At the end of the 19t ...

, Venezuela. At 23, he enrolled to study

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

at the

Central University of Venezuela The Central University of Venezuela (Spanish: ''Universidad Central de Venezuela''; UCV) is a public university of Venezuela located in Caracas. It is widely held to be the highest ranking institution in the country, and it also ranks 18th in ...

, where he graduated in 1956. Following graduation, he worked with other architects such as Brazilian

Oscar Niemeyer Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho (15 December 1907 – 5 December 2012), known as Oscar Niemeyer (), was a Brazilian architect considered to be one of the key figures in the development of modern architecture. Niemeyer was ...

and Spaniard

Eduardo Torroja Eduardo Torroja y Miret, 1st Marques of Torroja (27 August 1899 – 15 June 1961) was a Spanish structural engineer and a pioneer in the design of concrete shell structures. Education Torroja was born in Madrid where he studied civil engineering ...

. He joined the military political party of Venezuela, where he began to design projects for them and other

communist parties A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of '' The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...

Architectural style

Vivas' architectural style tends to consist of the International Style and

modernism Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

, though he varied the two styles via naturalist and humanist influences. His architecture style also utilizes ecology. The best example of his work is the Venezuelan Pavilion in Hannover Expo in 2000; the pavilion is characterized by the shape of the

orchid Orchids are plants that belong to the family Orchidaceae (), a diverse and widespread group of flowering plants with blooms that are often colourful and fragrant. Along with the Asteraceae, they are one of the two largest families of flowerin ...

flower, which is fifty-nine feet tall and protrudes from the building with its thirty-foot petals opening and closing depending on the weather.

Works

* Church of Santa Rosa,

Valencia, Venezuela Valencia () is the capital city of Carabobo State and the third-largest city in Venezuela. The city is an economic hub that contains Venezuela's top industries and manufacturing companies. It is also the largest city in the Valencia-Maracay m ...

(1946) * Táchira Club, Caracas, Venezuela (1955) * Moruco Hotel, Mérida, Venezuela (1955) * Museum of Modern Art, Caracas, Venezuela, worked with architect

(1955) * Church of the Divine Redeemer, San Cristóbal, Venezuela (1957) * Church of Zapara Urbanization, Maracaibo, Venezuela (1957) * La Cumbre Hotel,

Ciudad Bolívar Ciudad Bolívar (; Spanish for "Bolivar City"), formerly known as Angostura and St. Thomas de Guyana, is the capital of Venezuela's southeastern Bolívar State. It lies at the spot where the Orinoco River narrows to about in width, is the sit ...

, Venezuela (1958) * Major Square of San Cristobal, Venezuela (1958) * Trees for Life complex, Lecherias, Venezuela (1994) * Venezuelan Pavilion in Hannover Expo (2000) * Project of the NGO headquarters in Santos Brazil Recycled Lives (2011)

Awards and honorary doctorates

* National Award of Architecture in Venezuela (1987) * Architecture:

(2009) * Architecture: Experimental University of Tachira (2011)

Personal life

Architectural style

Works

Awards and honorary doctorates

Further reading