Echo of the origins
No trace remains of the presence of the Taino Indians, as the Spanish colonists made sure to wipe out all traces of the indigenous peoples. However, many Cubans claim to be part of this heritage, and continue to perpetuate Taino traditions, particularly in terms of housing. It's not uncommon to come across bohios, the traditional huts made of palm wood and thatch, rectangular or circular in plan. Some also have eaves supported by branches, creating a sort of protective gallery. Grouped around a central communal space, these huts are found particularly in eastern regions. These Taino huts are matched by rural dwellings that also feature plant materials (wood, palm), although thatch is often replaced or mixed with corrugated iron. These small houses are often on one level, bordered by a gallery, and those with a small garden are often enclosed by wooden or plant fences.
Colonial Splendors
Camagüey is a unique city in many ways, starting with its urban layout of maze-like alleyways linking squares and plazas in a variety of shapes reminiscent of medieval European towns. This is in stark contrast to the geometric layout favoured everywhere else by the Spanish colonists! La Habana Vieja is a fine example of this kind of layout, with the old town built around large squares linked by cobbled streets lined with arcades or portales. These shaded arcades are one of the ways in which architecture has adapted to Cuba's tropical climate, as is the structure of the colonial houses. Recognizable by their tiled roofs, often red, and whitewashed adobe walls, these houses are organized around a refreshing patio, with high ceilings and large barred openings for ventilation. Among the most beautiful colonial houses, often transformed into museums, is the Museo de Ambiente Historico Diego Velazquez in Santiago, whose construction began in 1516, making it the oldest on the island! And don't miss the pretty houses with barred windows in wrought iron or turned wood in Camagüey's Plaza San Juan de Dios. Havana's treasures, however, are protected by its incredible system of fortifications, made up of a multitude of interconnected forts, bastions and batteries. The Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabaña is one of the largest colonial fortresses on the American continent! The Castillo de la Real Fuerza, the oldest in the country, impresses with its massive stonework and diamond-shaped projections. Giovanni Battista Antonelli, one of the most famous military engineers of his time, is responsible for the impressive Castillo del Morro (San Pedro de la Roca) in Santiago. Built on a rocky promontory, the fortress is organized around a system of superimposed terraces linked by flights of stairs. Each platform contains powder magazines, guardhouses and garrison barracks. Geometric shapes, symmetry and respect for proportions are the watchwords of this Cuban transposition of the codes of Italian Renaissance military architecture. Later, colonial cities were adorned with the rich trappings of the Baroque period, as evidenced in Havana by the sumptuous Palacio de los Capitanes Generales and the impressive cathedral, with its undulating façade punctuated by columns of varying sizes. Inside, don't miss the masterpieces of sculpture and silversmithing by the Italian master Bianchini.
After the Baroque, it's time for the Neoclassical. In Havana, El Templete looks like an authentic Greek temple! This neoclassical style is inseparable from the island's period of sugar prosperity, of which Trinidad, with its Palacio Brunet and Cantero, is a fine representative. To discover the sugar industry that made its planter families so wealthy, head for the Los Ingenios valley, which is still home to 75 former sugar mills, including theformer San Isidro de los Destiladeros plantation, a ruined hacienda that still preserves vestiges of its furnaces, distilleries and irrigation systems, and above all its slave quarters... for we must never forget that the prosperity of this industry is inseparable from the exploitation made by the colonists of the slaves who came from Africa. Even more astonishing is the city of Cienfuegos, founded in 1819 by French planters who had fled revolts in Haiti. The city is a superb example of modern urban planning, taking into account for the first time natural ventilation and lighting to promote public hygiene. The original core is laid out in a checkerboard pattern of 25 perfectly regular blocks. The houses are 1 or 2 storeys high, with simple facades adorned with beautiful wrought ironwork, and sumptuous public and religious buildings such as the Santa Iglesia Catedral de la Purisima and the Teatro Tomas Terry. The wealth of the French in Cienfuegos is linked to coffee growing. At the foot of the Sierra Maestra, the archaeological and architectural remains of 171 coffee plantations, or cafetales, can still be seen. These include the planter's house, the drying terrace, production areas for grinding and roasting, workshops and outbuildings, and always the slaves' quarters. The coffee processing system set up by the French also required extensive hydraulic infrastructure, with cisterns and aqueducts still visible. The La Isabelica plantation, now a museum, is a fine example.
Architectural laboratory
The early 20th century was marked not only by the effervescence of Independence, but above all by an unprecedented influx of capital from the prosperity of the sugar and coffee industries and funding from the United States... who put their mark in monumental fashion, to say the least, as exemplified by Havana's Capitolio , an exact reproduction of Washington's Capitol, whose dome rises to 91.50 m and whose 17 m tall, 47 t statue symbolizing the Republic is the third largest in the world! Havana's famous Malecόn was also financed by Americans. Eclecticism is the preferred style for exalting this prosperity and political renewal. The new temples of this century are the banks and administrations, as shown by the Banco Nacional de Cuba and the Renaissance palace-like Bourse de Commerce, both in Havana, or the Palacio de Gobierno in Cienfuegos, whose red dome is a must-see. The city is also home to the Palacio de Valle, with its orientalist trappings, Carrara marble, Venetian ceramics and European crystal. The mix of styles in Havana's chic neighborhoods almost borders on the excessive. In Marianao, streets lined with cobblestones and trees are lined with mansions that look like Californian chalets, Venetian palaces and Bavarian castles! The Miramar district is famous for its "5th Avenue" lined with sumptuous mansions. Eclecticism then gave way to Art Nouveau. The finest examples of this style are the Gardens of La Tropical Brewery in Havana. This sublime recreational park is populated by astonishing pavilions, such as the Ensueno Pavilion with its star-shaped ceiling and railings reminiscent of curves and interlacing plants, or this chapel built in an artificial grotto of stone and cement. These astonishing constructions are reminiscent of the work of the brilliant Antonio Gaudi.
Still in Havana, head to 107 Calle Cardenas to discover one of the city's most beautiful Art Nouveau residences, with its turquoise façade, torso columns and superb stylized ironwork. The sobriety and geometry of Art Deco lines will replace this decorative art. Havana's edificio Bacardi is the proudest example, and the city's first skyscraper. Its silhouette of marble, red granite and polychrome ceramics is reminiscent of New York buildings. Other fine Art Deco examples include the Edificio Lopez Serrano, the Teatro Fausto and the Cine Sierra Maestra. This period was also marked by a sharp increase in the urban population. This was also the period of the proliferation of barbacoas, a term used to describe the transformation of colonial houses into apartments by cutting them in half lengthwise and widthwise, and masonry-covering the loggias to create mezzanines, overloading the structures with cramped spaces reminiscent of meat cooked in its own juices... a barbacoa! The 1940s marked the birth of the modern movement. Having previously been trained in the codes of the Renaissance and Beaux-Arts, young Cuban architects returned from their travels in the USA, Brazil and France with their heads full of the modernist ideals then in vogue. It is even said that, to mark their definitive break with historicism and eclecticism, they burned Vignole's Treatise on the Five Orders of Architecture! Inspired by Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe and Richard Neutra (who designed the astonishing motel-like Casa Schulthess), these young architects favored fluid, uncluttered forms, rejected decorative artifice and exploited the full architectural potential of concrete, glass and steel. But to this very international modernism, they added, at the outset, the 3 P rule for patio-persian-portico, in order to adapt the architecture to the island's tropical identity. Color, light and vegetation are very much in evidence. Gradually, these tropical additions were replaced by rationalist purity. Among the astonishing projects of the 1940s are the José Marti stadium on the Malecόn, the Yara cinema with its curved roof reminiscent of Bauhaus lines, and the Solimar building. In the 1950s, Cuba experienced a construction boom and saw a proliferation of concrete towers. The Edificio Focsa in Havana was the first to be built using the new wiring and concreting techniques. It is one of the symbols of the Vedado district, where concrete reigns supreme. The island is also experiencing a boom in hotel architecture, which opts for a resolutely international style with concrete structures and banded windows, as in the Tryp Habana Libre Hotel (formerly Hilton) designed by the American Welton Becket and the Cuban Lin Arroyo, a close associate of Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer.
Since 1960
The 1960s saw the launch of one of the most astonishing projects in Cuba's history: the national art schools, symbols of the utopian ideals of the socialist revolution. The architects chosen for the project were given carte blanche to express these values. The only constraint was the difficulty of finding resources and materials, due to government regulations and the embargo imposed by the United States. Brick and terracotta tiles were therefore chosen. Italian architects Roberto Gottardi and Vittorio Garatti were responsible for the drama school and the ballet and music schools respectively. The first , with its Mannerist accents, is a reflection on the staging of space. The music school, with its rehearsal stalls winding along the sloping grounds, is dubbed "the worm", while the dance school impresses with its airy, dancing vaults. But it was the School of Visual Arts that made the biggest splash. Designed by Cuban architect Riccardo Porro, it uses the Catalan vault technique, a curved structure made of flat bricks, forming a dome in which many have seen a breast, an impression reinforced by the presence of a fountain-sculpture representing a papaya, the name by which the female sex is often referred to in Cuba. What a shock for conservative minds! Never completed, these art schools were nevertheless classified as National Monuments in 2011. This creative freedom was quickly replaced by a monumental functionalism with brutalist overtones borrowed from Soviet architecture. The Malecόn skyscrapers, including the now-famous Edificio Giron, are prime examples. This period was also marked by new urban and social experimentation, most notably in Havana. The Ciudad Camilo Cienfuegos was the first attempt at a housing estate whose dwellings were surrounded by vegetation and service areas, and whose streets and roads were designed to facilitate the commute between home and work: a utopian project that was soon transformed into a dormitory town. Just like the Alamar district, inextricably linked to the government's micro-brigade system. Based on the principle of self-building, this system invited residents to build their own homes after working hours. A brigade was made up of 33 workers who had to construct a 3 to 5-storey building comprising 30 apartments. The buildings were made of prefabricated concrete. The Alamar project and all similar projects not only exploited the local population, but also turned them into isolated dormitory towns that fell into disrepair extremely quickly, as concrete was not at all suited to the island's tropical climate. The apartment blocks built in the heart of the Sierra del Rosario to house reforestation workers are a case in point. The deterioration in the political and social climate has also been accompanied by a stagnation in the construction industry, from which the country is still struggling to extricate itself. Materials are still extremely expensive, and regulations governing the architectural profession are extremely restrictive. A few projects are appearing, such as the Factoria Habana Art Galery designed by Abiel San Miguel in a rehabilitated former industrial building; or those by the Albor Arquitectos agency, which often works on single-family homes... but these projects are rare. Similarly, while the government makes a point of preserving its listed heritage, the many preservation campaigns omit a considerable number of houses and buildings that are falling into disrepair over time. But Cuba is at a turning point in its history, and many of its artists and architects want to reinvent their island!
