Carolina Tinoco Diaz

Carolina Tinoco Diaz. (Born 2-4-72) is a Venezuelan-born architect, integral designer and artist. With a special emphasis on reinventation and repurposing of objects, recycling and upcycling, Carolina is the proprietor of a unique style of design that coexists with her relentless search for the transformation of ugly into beautiful. This has become Carolina’s creative engine, her “raison de être”. Also known for her unique style, good taste and for being a Trendsetter, she performs her creative work as an architect, designer and artist, promoter, educator and entrepreneur. The versatility of her work is contained within a playful methodology, both didactic and simple, with the aim of stimulating the viewer to co-create, and it also reflects her personal history, soul and engine of her creative process. Hence her passion for reinventing what is created including herself in a personal matter. Weaves disciplines in areas that transcend traditional architecture to design the whole. By creating original environments and objects made out of humble materials that are at hand and are considered unconventional or waste, she reuses and recycles to create both urban and interior spaces, furnishings, installations and ephemeral events providing an artistic dimension.

Early life

Born in the city of Caracas, Venezuela, and the only daughter of Guillermo Tinoco Lemoine and Luisa Elena Diaz, Carolina was exposed to changing winds at a very early age. When she was only four years of age, Carolina moved to Boston with her mother and constantly traveled to New York City during the weekends. In the United States, and due to her mother’s artistic sensitivity, Carolina immediately found herself submerged in every day interactions with musicians, painters, sculptors, poets, actors, film directors, and people related to the fashion world that contributed to lay the foundations of her artistic identity. Some of her mother’s friends included Venezuelan musicians attending college in the Berkley School of Music around the time when Latin Jazz was being born.

In the late 1970s, New York City was becoming accustomed to its title of “Capital of the World” and all cultural roads lead to its streets, theaters and galleries, in which young Carolina spent her weekends and holidays attending events throughout the city, which turned her into an habitué in major cultural happenings at the highest levels. The city of New York became Carolina’s favorite artistic playground and the place where her inclination towards the plastic arts and new media began as a mean to express her concepts.

In 1978, a terrible blizzard pounded the northeastern coast of the United States. The Northeastern United States Blizzard of 1978 as it was called, forced young Carolina and her mother out to be rescued due to the flooding produced by rain and snow at her beach front house. After spending several days on a shelter, Carolina was flown back to Caracas into her maternal grandmother’s house. A wonderful woman, Luisa Elena Gonzalez Urbaneja became one of the first women in Venezuela to pursue a career in law in Venezuela, to later divorce and raise six children. In this house, Carolina was sheltered by younger uncles and aunts that exposed her to various tendencies of a wide cultural specter, such as music of all kinds, ranging from Opera to Jazz, Salsa including Classical music, Symphonic Rock, and many others. Literature, art and journalism were also other influences received by young Carolina by her loving maternal family, while giving her an extensive scope in terms of cultural manifestations. During these years, she spent her vacation time with her mother’s family in Venezuela and with her father between Venezuela and Florida. Her father Guillermo was a pilot himself and had moved to the United States to follow studies as a flight instructor, when Carolina was 7. Her father was a lover of adventure in the outdoors and nature in all its shapes and forms. A believer and follower of yoga and meditation as well as a party lover and a charismatic individual, Guillermo Tinoco was an adventorous free spirit with an enormous sensitivity for all human beings as equals. This way of seeing life took an important place on Carolina’s heart that would later manifest through her artistic compositions: Improvisation as a norm; the freedom of choice and a close contact to the simple things in life. These were concepts that embedded themselves steadily on Carolina. Unfortunately, in 1981, Guillermo died in Vero Beach Florida in a car accident, when Carolina was only 9 years old.

A mind stretches its arms

After her return from the United States, Carolina attended a private catholic school in Caracas’ “Colegio Cristo Rey” from 1978 to 1991, where her desires to help others began taking form and were put into action. The school had a program for social work in the Barrio slums of Caracas and Carolina rolled herself in. This experience provided Carolina a looking glass through which the necessities of less favored people were becoming more real and therefore, more heart-wrenching, and her continuous work for the poor continued itself way after Carolina graduated from High School and moved to Paris for a year. This opportunity for a curious girl to learn about the way other people lived, the necessities they had to face daily, would be later expressed on her works in the slums Caracas’ “barrios”, a Venezuelan version of Brazilian Favelas

After she graduated from High School, Carolina took a sabbatical year in Paris, where she attended different courses involving French, Haute Cuisine, History of Art & Architecture at Institut Catholique de Paris in 1990-91, and Painting and Sculpture at Parsons Paris, a branch of the famous Parsons School of Design as well as French Culture in the renowned Sorbonne University. After this, she lived 6 months in NYC, where she attented drawing classes at New York’s prestigious Metropolitan Museum of Art. These months proved invaluable for young Carolina, as Paris opened a whole new world of cultures, and definitely embedded in her the importance of equal conditions, social sensitivity and the importance of culture and education.

Off to College. Off to Life

Back in Venezuela, Carolina enrolled in Universidad Central de Venezuela to follow a career in architecture. In 1995, during her studies, Carolina was invited to do field work in the slums by Professor and Mentor Federico Villanueva Brandt. This led to a huge involvement on her behalf with social causes, and Carolina had the freedom to experiment with diverse alternatives rehabilitate living facilities inside the slums and recycle materials to solve high-cost building issues. The first project she engaged was the cleanup of the “Catuche” creek in Caracas and the planning of a condominium of 25 houses with semi public spaces. In 1997, Carolina and her peers left one semester to live in a slum in an oil city called "Punta de Mata" in the northeastern part of Venezuela. The project was to replace the precarious “rancho” house of the poorest families in town for more-efficient housing facilities made out of waste, and using oil-related waste as Carolina’s idea. This project was called “Progressive house with oil-related waste” and was performed with local people experimenting with new materials and soil mixes with concrete that enabled them to create blocks and use the oil-related industrial waste as the extraction tubes as structure. This led to the interaction with various local communities; teaching them constructive techniques and motivating them build their own residential prototypes, which could be built progressively in different stages, considering the elements they could reuse, recycle or find easily in nature. In 1997 she graduated and was Awarded the “Diploma de Excelencia Academica” (Diploma for academic excellence), and her Graduate Thesis were awarded with the AXIS Prize, granted by UNIDAD 09, Facultad de Arquitectura UCV.

Professional Life

Before she even attended college, Carolina had been already involved in small summer jobs at the age of 15, when she had the unique privilege of working in Benacerraf & Gómez, a Caracas-based architecture firm where she decided to study architecture. This experience would prove invaluable later on her life, as she had the right mental and professional skills to undertake projects that would give her passion a true meaning. From Architecture she took the wide scope and the “structural” way of thinking.

Fresh out of College, Carolina was ready to pour her experiences and knowledge into practical activities. Fully aware of the ever-growing poverty in her country and the lack of planning in terms of government housing-related policies, Carolina began working for AMHABITAT which proved to be that first sanctuary in which to let her ideas flow, always maintaining her compass north, to the flowing waters of a recycling career. Her first major project involved a profesional multi-agencies effort aimed at the physical habilitation of all slums in Venezuela. The methodology to be used was designed by her mentors Federico Villanueva and Josefina Baldo in a book called called “Habilitación física de Zonas de Barrios” (Revamping of Slum areas), included in Venezuela’s Housing Policy Project for 1999-2000. Amongst them were the physical revamping and the design of an urban plan in a shanty town called “San Miguel de la Vega”, which included a cultural center and surrogate housing and the architectural design and construction of “80 Viviendas de Sustitución” (surrogate houses) for residents of Aguachina in Caricuao, a huge slum in the southwest of Caracas, with top-notch technology, reducing the use of concrete-related materials in the least amount of time. Additionally, Carolina got involved in projects like the revamping of a structure for a multiple use center, a public square and a school in the “La Antena” slum in Barquisimeto, Venezuela’s fourth largest city and the construction of progressive housing prototypes at the “La Puente” area in Maturín, a medium-sized city in the east of Venezuela. In 1999 she receives an award for the competition of ideas for the physical habilitation of Petare and La Vega, two huge slums in Caracas, as well as a special award for the Vista Hermosa project in La Vega, Caracas.

By the year 2000, Carolina is invited to participate in the “VII Bienal de Arte de La Habana” (VII La Habana Art Biennial) that took place in La Habana Cuba, as an architect, and proposes to create and curate an exhibit called “Ciudad experimental” (“Experimental City” ) to show the new architectural trends and communal co-design in slums. Projects like this were considered avant-garde for their esthetic and educational quality, so Carolina herself lead a team of professionals, which included her Mentors, former classmates and colleagues. Furthermore, she took part as a curator in an exhibit called “Futuros Urbanos” (Urban futures) held at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas on the occasion of an OPEC World Summit that took place Caracas in 1999, showing the housing projects for low income population of the countries members of OPEC, while simultaneously continued to educate poor communities in the techniques of recycling and also teaching Design and Architecture in Venezuela’s Universidad Jose María Vargas and as a guest teacher in Venezuela’s biggest university, Universidad Central de Venezuela, her Alma Mater. At the same time, Carolina Tinoco designed her own methodology called Espacios Públicos Lúdicos (Ludic Public Spaces) to design along with communities in an easy and interactive environment, on a slum called “Altos de Lidice” in Caracas.

New roads to discover

Carolina decides to return to New York in 2001 with the intention of studying the Master of Urban Design at Columbia University, a few days before the 9/11 attacks. Here she found outbreak in all its senses, information, intensity, speed, chaos and paradoxically, order. In one of her publications, she describes the experience in this way: "On September 11, I saw from the roof of my apartment in Brooklyn, everything that happened. It was almost impossible to believe that wanting to escape from the instability of Latin American underdevelopment; I had come to the capital of the world to witness such a shocking event. I realized that the problem was global not local. The notably social, cultural and economic differences, the violence, vulnerability and imbalance are collective coincidences from the first and third world."

Carolina is a versatile and creative artist. This has been reflected since her early years and this versatility has given her the chance to experiment in different areas aimed at blending architecture with design, communication and arts. In 1997 a fine example of such diversity became a reality when she created “LOCAL” a space for arts in Caracas, specializing in Latin American contemporary artists such as Eugenio Espinoza, Hector Fuenmayor, Roberto Obregón, Luis Simón Molina Pantin, Carlos Julio Molina and Sandra Vivas. The curatorship of exhibitions such as “Los Plomeros” (The Plumbers) “Falsas Pistas” (False Leads) and Palimpsestos calls the attention of the international arts community, and the participation in the VII Guadalajara Contemporary Art Fair in 1998 in Mexico reinforced such movement.

From 2003 to 2006 she creates and becomes the editor of CRITERIA EDITORIAL, an editorial company dedicated to publish different genres such as non-fiction, actuality, history, poetry and urbanism with more than 25 works of Venezuelan literature and two urban projects: “La Ciudad Ordenada” (The Organized City) by Venezuelan attorney Allan Brewer-Carías in 2006 and a photography book called Caracas Cenital (Caracas from above) in 2005.

Integrated Puzzles

In the realm of Integral Design she begins with an artistic installation of ludic furniture built on the foundation of interactive design. This idea arose from mathematical puzzles made by modular pieces that can be assembled to create different configurations. The achievement and ultimate goal of this setup is the creative design that maximizes every space, however small, thus creating alternate seating for the use in small sport courts of the Chacao cultural center. In these years, her works towards interior designing, the remodeling of the store & workshop “TRIUMPH” in 2006, and in 2007, eco-designing for the Fuller Store, located in Caracas’s exclusive mall Centro San Ignacio, right on the heart of one of the highest end areas in the city.

Enter Barbarella

Creative steam has always been flowing from Carolina’s inner desires and wishes for a recycle-friendly society. However, the need for another channel in which her ideas could flow in the river of the reinvention seas also took a toll on her own personality plus the enormous influence received throughout her whole life that set the ground for BARBARELLA, an event and project company created in 2002. Conceived as a creative launch pad for innovative solutions for the reinvention of the Party Scene, her company offered an array of contemporary furniture and pre designed or personalized set design as well as conceptual artistic related events BARBARELLA’s style became iconic when local Advertising companies changed their focus to Direct Marketing. Carolina’s new concept caught pretty quickly inside Caracas’ lavish and distinguished party ambiance and clients sprouted everywhere, lured by her new and innovative proposals.

ECODAR 3

By 2008, a new endeavor for Carolina became clear when ECODAR 3 was conceived as a way to educate people about new recycling methodologies, since a national recycle-friendly policy is not in effect in the country. The focus of ECODAR is in the reuse of waste material to be transformed into useful items before being discarded.

Examples of this are the joint work with Spanish GRUPO BASURAMA, on the occasion of a festival called “Por la Calle del Medio”, with talks and events regarding recycling as a creative tool; Re Bar with San Francisco designer John Bela, ENRIC GODES (Graphic designer for Grupo Vasava. Barcelona, Spain). This also led to street events like “Caracas vibra en Verde” and Soluciones Climaticas 350.

One of Carolina-s most renowned projects “El Cuñete” (The Keg), was selected to participate at the II Ibero-American Biennial in 2010 as well as chairs made out of covered tire tubes, useful objects like lamps made out of large cooking pots a strainer and a bucket. At ECODAR, projects and products are made and marketed in a way that promotes ecological thinking, providing tutorship and mentoring on creative and experimental eco friendly methodologies to private companies as well as governmental agencies for the development of procedures, prototypes and innovative products while raising awareness about ecology in designing. Mainly, ECODAR is a project that includes an “Ecolab”, which is an experimental laboratory for workshops and lectures, covering all aspects of recycling and reutilization of various materials, from food itself to eco-friendly architecture. This would become a window in which artists, designers and architects could display their works and creations, as well as projects like “Reciclaje Couture”, specializing in the artistic intervention of apparel previously used.

Current Life

Living in Paris with her daughter Andrea, Carolina collaborates with French magazine TL MAGAZINE as a creative editor, and in the Woma’s innovative Fab Lab and has created a pop up gallery for the first exhibition of Belgium designer Kaspar Hamacher that reuses dead trees and transforms them into sensitive design pieces. Recently she collaborated with designer Alexis Tricoire Vegetal atmosphere in the exhibition Hybridaton at Jardin des plantes Paris. Additionally, she has been invited to attend “New Territories” an upcoming exhibition to be held at New York’s MAD Museum of Arts & Design on November 4, 2014, as an artist as well as a designer. Her project called “Re (d)” is part of the transformation of iconic chairs from the 20th century, salvaged from the remaining inventory of event company Barbarella. These chairs are transformed by Carolina into exquisite pieces of both design and art, as the blueprints of the projects in which she was involved in the Venezuelan slums are recycled on the chairs.