By Laurence Wilson, AIA
>> AIANYS sponsored a weeklong trip to Cuba, with 24 architects and companions from Long Island, New York City and Albany. While normally skeptical of planned group travel, this trip was great fun owing to the good nature of our group and guides. We visited 3 cities, Havana, Cienfuegos and Trinidad. Each being centuries old, these were great choices for an architectural experience. It was a well-organized trip. While we saw only a fraction of this complex country I will attempt to convey some meaningful architectural impressions. Cristobal Colon landed on Cuba (naming it Juana) on October 28, 1492, his first voyage to America, beginning Spain’s rule of Cuba lasting until 1898. One of the oldest cities in the Americas, Havana is replete with great architecture and urban places spanning 500 years. Old Havana (La Habana Vieja) straddles the harbor with rich complex historical overlays. Numerous fortifications safeguarded the city over generations. Castillo de la Real Fuerza, the star fortress is the oldest stone fort in the Americas, first stones laid in 1562, preceding the Mayflower voyage by 58 years. In 1982 this district was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site; Old Havana and its Fortifications. Havana’s architectural evolution, aggregated over centuries was frozen by revolution, virtually halted in 1959 save the effects of economic deprivation, neglect, and various heavy handed Soviet era monuments and banal modern housing blocks, speaking to authoritarianism, central planning, absence of free market capital, and the devastating embargo. Cuba is a country of squatters. People do not own buildings, they occupy them, and with no
incentive for improvements or maintenance, they are everywhere dilapidated and collapsing. These laws are changing and renovations are popping like “popcorn” as one Architect guide described. We stayed at Hotel Nacional de Cuba, McKim, Mead and White c. 1930, on Taganana Hill, site of the Santa Clara Battery c. 1797. This late eclectic work of the firm is mediocre apart from its mass and prominence atop the hill, list of famous guests and notorious mobster Meyer Lansky who was part owner in the 1950’s. Another notable hotel/casino built by Lansky is the Hotel Habana Riviera. While this 1950’s edifice of freewheeling American corruption and excess is otherwise bland, it is untouched by renovators, a time capsule of period architecture, interior design, furniture, fabrics, lighting and art, with works by notable Cuban muralist Rolando Lopez Dirube and sculptor Florencio Gelabert. It is like time travel. Havana’s streetscapes are compelling adventures, from tight, dense meandering streets of old Havana, many impoverished and crumbling, to broad avenues of 19th and 20th century, extravagant outer districts with rich eclectic buildings, also crumbling. Notably, the Paseo de Prado or grand boulevard is a superb urban place conceived during 18th century expansion outside the fortified walls. This broad, tree lined, terrazzo-paved pedestrian way with marble benches, is lined with excellent buildings of classical, baroque, renaissance, Moorish, deco and other styles. At its head is the Great Theater of Havana c. 1908, pure eye candy. The Jose Fuster residence and studio is mind bending. Inspired by the Santeria, Picasso and Gaudi, Fuster has enveloped several city blocks with pure fantasy, dripping with ceramic and mosaic sculpture and art without inhibition or restraint; Park Guell on steroids and lots of fun. The Universidad de las Artes by contrast is serious architecture, rare after the revolution. This complex was conceived in 1961 by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara and was collaboratively designed by Ricardo Porro, Roberto Gottardi, and Vittorio Garatti. The embargo necessitated labor intensive locally manufactured bricks, terracotta, and mortar. The formal concept is highly original and organic, employing traditional Catalan vaulted brick technology and archetypal African village plan and massing. This however ran counter to International
WINTER 2017