The vision of architects Peter Neuberger, Dirk Bornhorst, and Jorge Romero Gutierrez included restaurants, gyms, clubs, a movie theater and hotel accessed via diagonal elevators and escalators. Two intertwining paths, bound together to form a helix, would allow vehicles to move up and down the spiraling structure. At each level, the rooftops of the stores below would serve as the multi-mile spiraling ramp with 2,000 parking spots for cars headed up the hillside.
But his architects had grander designs: they envisioned a vast commercial development. The owner of the 300,000-square-foot hill on which the building was sited initially imagined a residential complex. This ill-fated Utopian project would, however, never live up to its promised potential. It was in many ways a product of its times: a 1950s vision of cars and commerce.
It was designed to be a drive-in shopping center with motorists cruising up and parking in front of stores - a kind of strip mall in the sky. Standing out against surrounding shanties in Caracas, El Helicoide spirals skyward like a modern Tower of Babel.
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