First, let me make a small confession. I went to Carmen's talk because she is a beautiful woman from Venezuela with an incredibly sexy Spanish accent.

Her Proposed City:
As anyone who has followed city designs for Mars might know. Most designs in the last few decade have been purely functional adobe box structures or variations on domes. Not much of that old "Jetsons" science fiction cities of incredible spider web thin structures, lofty towers, etc. Carmen's city is out of the earlier mold of Worlds Fairs (I like in Seattle) and building big because you can on Mars. I wish she had a website it would be worth a little surfing. Imagine what Santiago Calatrava might have done if he did futuristic cityscapes like Norman Bel Geddes and Hugh Ferriss did for magazines like "Amazing Stories" and you have a little of the look of her city.

Carmen is looking for a job as an architect in the USA, maybe with NASA. But, bring art back into designs for Mars cities will be an uphill battle. I wish her all the luck. I think she would be an asset to any firm she was employed by.

--Chris Vancil