http://www.smithsonianmag.com/havana-architecture-gems-180960692/?no-ist
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| Teatro América Havana, Cuba lahabana.com |
The recent death of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro and the restoration of ties between the island nation and the United States has many Cubans and Cuban-Americans pondering the future. One of the question marks in the nation's future is its architectural treasures. Cuba is home to a real treasure trove of modern architecture. Patrick Symmes of the Smithsonian Magazine recently traveled to the nation to report on "Havana's Hidden Architectural Gems." The challenge of these architectural gems is ongoing maintenance. We begin our tour of Havana's Architectural Gems at the Teatro América.
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| Interior of Teatro AméricaHavana, Cuba decopix.com |
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| Ceiling and staircase Teatro AméricaHavana, Cuba
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Falling plaster, according to Mr. Alfaro Samá, "...was typical of Cuba." He is determined to restore the theatre to how it was in its gold age, however, the theater needs more than just a few repairs. The space is frequently booked, leaving almost no time for proper restoration. Mr. Symmes reports, "Maintenance of a public building is the responsibility of bureaucrats outside the theater anyway." Mr. Alfaro Samá adds,
I've worked here 18 years, and in that time we learned to work around problems.
The company has repeatedly patched ceilings and walls.
Patricks Symmes observes, "In more than two decades o reporting in Havana, I've grown accustomed to visual signatures o the city: grimy old buildings, rattletrap cars, little that is new or bright. But that is only on the surface; in Cuba, there is always an inside, a life of interior spaces, an this especially true amide the city's hidden gems of architecture."
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| Teatro America from Galiano Street Havana, Cuba theguardian.com |
"There is no city in the world so layered with hidden beauty. Yet today, as Havana opens to the world, it is also poised at the edge off collapse."
Mr. Symmes retured to the city in March of this year to get the answers to his questions:
"Can a place long known or its decay become dedicated to preservation? What can be done to protect its architectural legacy? And that be accomplished while also meeting the growing off Cuba's hard-pressed and ambitious people?"
First lesson: Watch out for falling chunks of plasters.
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| Havana, Cuba businessinsider.com |
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| Russian Embassy in Havana, Cuba en.wikipedia.or |
...Havana is a library of architecture...Every style is well represented there, and the reason for its main is the tripartite culture-African, American, European.
From the beginning the city featured a mix of period styles: medieval star-shaped forts, shaded Moorish colonnades, Greco-Roman columns, French landscape design, and the landmark Malecón seawall built with the assistance of the U.S. Army Corps o Engineers. Former Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius paid a visit to Cuba in the forties and the influx of Columbia University trained architect helped make the city an architectural cross roads.
The layering continued through 1958, with scant gestures since then, specifically the National Art Schools in Cubanacán. It was in this suburb that a collective of Cuban architect transformed a private golf course into a sprawling campus of rehearsal halls, terra-cotta painting studios, and classrooms. It was a utopian ideal of social progress but by 1965, the dream collapsed, abandoned to the jungle. Now partly reclaimed, it struggles badly, in spite of leaking roofs, but it remains actives.
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| The National Arts School Havana, Cuba architect.com |
Raúl Rodríquez is understandably proud to this extensive historical catalog. He is also critical about what has not happened since. Washington D.C.-based Gary Martinez described the stagnation,
There's a crust that has developed...an age o time over the entire city.
Mr. Martinez has visited Havana or 15 year, studying its public spaces. Mr. Symmes asked him question that every visitor has: "What makes Havana-dirty, impoverished, dilapidated-so seductive?" Mr. Martinez replied,
The decay. The texture. The colors. The seemingly random organization of building. There's nothing quite like it.
Gary Martinez described discovering an old theater with a retractable roof. He assumed, based on its appearance that it was abandoned. However, he and his companions sound men repairing cars in the former lobby. Moving further interior, they came upon a dance group training onstage. Thanks to haphazard repairs, the roof is still retractable-sometimes.
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| Hotel Nacional Vedado, Havana, Cuba cubaism.com |
Elmis Sadivar, the matron of a household Mr. Symmes dropped in on in Calzada del Cerro, described the situation,
The government said it would get the tiles we need ["to maintain the historic character o building] but it never comes.
The family cannot afford to make repairs themselves. She added, A bag of cement costs half a month's salary.
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| Havana Museum of Decorative Arts secretearth.com |
The Museum is located in the 1927 home of José Gómez Mena, whose sister María Luisa was a socialite and patron of the arts. Mr. Symmes visited the museum to ask technical director Gustavo López about their shared love of art deco architecture. Mr. López was quick to point out that the American style of art deco is prevalent in Cuba, but not unique; it is found in Florida and New Zealand. The Colonial architecture is considered the jewel. These jewels are in Old Havana, the protected part of the city.
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| Old Havana Havana, Cuba trip wow.tripadvisor.com |
It had good luck to be inside the jurisdiction of the city historian.
Mr. López is referring of Eusebio Leal, the well regarded official. Mr. Symmes writes, "Leal was given unprecedented authority in the early 1990s to rebuild the entire district, serving as its de facto mayor and renovation tsar."
One example of Mr. Leal power and methods can be seen in the Plaza Vieja ("Old Square"). As the name implies, it is the oldest of Havana's original five plazas. Describing his experience with the Plaza in the eighties, Mr. López said,
I remember as a student climbing over mounds of of rubble there,...You had to be careful.
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| Panorama of Plaza Vieja Havana, Cuba Stock Photograph 123rf.com |
Patrick Symmes first experience with Plaza Vieja was in 1991. He writes, "...it was a wreck of marshy sinkholes and collapsing buildings, the houses all around it apuntadas or 'on points,' and braced against collapse." Today, the Plaza is a place bustling with tourist activities and ordinary Cubans going about their daily lives. The dense surrounding blocks are home to long-term residents. Raúl Rodríguez opined of Mr. Leal,
Against wind and tide, he's done it...He is a hero even to Cubans who left Cuba. What he has done is going to outlast him and us.
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| Grabado Plaza Vieja Calle Inquisidor e/Muralla y Tenienta Rey oldhavananews.com |
However, Mr. Leal's work is focused on Old Havana and the some of the oldest historic outside it. The majority of the surrounding city, budgets for architectural is not quite as generous and do not really generate tourist revenue. Mr. López sighs,
Leal's team has more resources; they have their own methods.
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| Club Náutico Max Borges Recio, 1953 Havana, Cuba thehmagazine.com |
Other spectacular buildings have been lost to this type of corrosion, included the waterfront amusement park in Miramar called, strange as it sounds, El Coney Island. The carousels and small Ferris wheel that once faced the seaside pavilion have rusty. In 2008 Chinese investors replaces with a concrete amusement park dubbed Coconut Island.
In 2013, Cuban arts reporter Camilo Valls told Mr. Symmes about a beautiful old Moorish theater whose iconic bronze doors were looted. Three years later, Mr. Valls has given up hope: The threatened buildings would soon completely disappear. He then described the new Cuban vernacular that he dismissed a "kitsch style." This is the horrifying tendency to remove historic feature and replace them with nouveau riche displays. The trend is to toss out "old" light fixtures and install made-in-China replacements and flat-screen televisions. Gustavo López told Patrick Symmes,
There will be a disaster if we don't have norms.
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| The López Serrano Building Ricardo Mira and Miguel Rosich Havana, Cuba translatingcuba.com |
Journalist Sarah Vega, who lives in the building, explains,
Five hundred and forty-five windows of real wood...
Ms. Vega made a short film, Deconstruction, about the building's history which was designed to emblematic of Cuba's aspirations toward modern society. The front doors are bronzed bas reliefs that still shine and visitors move through a marble lobby toward twin elevators, separate by a bas relief by Enrique Garcia Cabrera titles Time. An art deco clock crowned the futurism infused relief before it was stolen. The ceiling light fixtures are wired shut to prevent theft.
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| Elevator lobby of the López Serrano Building Yadira Montero Havana, Cuba lahabana.com |
In 1959, the rich fled in advance of Fidel Castro and the needy moved in. Ms. Vega enthused that the vacated apartments and houses across Cuba were given to the poor. However, she noted, the residents were concerned about the culture change, many of the new residents unconcerned about the building's history or preservation. It is an insidious problem, Gustavo López adds,
People often don't know where they are living, when it was built, if it was a famous architect...If you don't care for what exists, it disappear.
During the desperate economic times in the nineties, some of Ms. Vega's neighbors began selling off the deco fixtures, including the original toilets. It was the same period that the clock disappear. Sarah Vega acknowledge the building's problems,
It's not just money...It's lack of knowledge.
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| López Serrano staircase Havana, Cuba arquitecturacuba.com |
Perhaps the biggest threat to the López Serrano is the fact that no one really owns it. The Fidel Castro government nationalized ownership of all apartment buildings in 1959 but ten years ago, it scaled back on this policy and returned ownership of apartment buildings to the residents. Be that as it may, the government still has the responsibility to maintain the shared public spaces and exteriors. That feasible in high-priority places like Old Havana, but for the rest of the city, decay is the rule. Mr. Symmes observed, "Many buildings look substantially worse now than when I first arrived in 1991. An astounding portion of the city's buildings are roofless wrecks. No one is truly in charge."
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| López Serrano roofline Havana, Cuba holidayplace.co.uk |
Strangely, there is some hope in Cuba's weakened economy: "...in a land with little money but plenty of skilled craftsmen, simple forms of preservation are often the best option." Wealthy foreign developers are not allowed to take over whole neighborhoods, yet as Cubans slowly earn income, renovations can take place a little at a time. Part of a building can be converted into a restaurant, a house becomes a hotel, and without a master plan, a block and the historic fabric of a district are maintained. Creeping "Kitsch style" could be held at bay by strengthening Cuba's historic preservation laws, particularly for iconic structures.
Architect Gary Martinez prefers the piecemeal approach. Large swaths of Havana are fallow, buildings are either underused or abandoned. Mr. Martinez said, let people fix them up, slowly, on their own. His business partner Tom Johnson added, that it con almost infinitely accommodate small changes.
The restoration of ties between the United States and Cuba foretell of big changes. The Cuban government is soliciting investment in order to rebuild the port of Havana, with much needed housing on one side of the harbor. Patrick Symmes writes, "Just as Eusebio Leal has been able to preserve the residential character of Old Havana as he rebuilt it, others should be empowered to extend that model to other parts of the city. The challenge is to accommodate the next Havana, even while preserving all of the previous one.
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