Carlos Raúl Villanueva is the most renowned Venezuelan modern architect, designer of several social housing developments as ‘El Silencio’ (1941–1945) and ‘23 de Enero’ (1955–1957) and also of one of the most singular examples of Modern Architecture in Latin América, the Ciudad Universitaria of Caracas, campus of Central University of Venezuela (1944–1970), declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000. Villanueva was born when his father was part of the Venezuelan diplomatic service. His childhood and youth was spent in Europe, most of it in France, where he studied, first in the Lycée Condorcet and later in l’Ecole des Beaux Arts de Paris, graduating as an architect in 1928. Villanueva developed his professional work in Venezuela between 1930 and 1970. During these forty years he embraced the biggest ideal of the modern architect: to work for the common man, for society as a whole, devoting himself to the service of the Venezuelan State. In 1937 Villanueva returned to France for seven months. The project for the Venezuelan pavilion for the Paris International Expo, designed with Luis Malaussena, gave him the opportunity to again be in the midst of artistic avant-gardes. In Paris Villanueva studied Urbanism at the University of Paris and attendance of the fifth Congrès international d’architecture moderne (CIAM) meeting, both of which helped to consolidate his credo in modern architecture and in the synthesis of arts.