Echo of the origins

Of the presence of the Taino Indians, there is no trace left, as the Spanish colonists made sure to remove all traces of the indigenous peoples. However, many Cubans claim this heritage and perpetuate the Taino traditions, especially in terms of habitat. It is not uncommon to come across bohios, traditional huts made of palm wood and thatched roof, with a rectangular or circular plan. Some of them also have an eaves supported by branches creating a sort of protective gallery. Grouped around a central collective space, these huts are found particularly in the eastern regions. These taino huts are matched by a rural habitat which also makes the most of plant materials (wood, palm), even if 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 delimited by wooden or plant fences.

Colonial Splendors

Camagüey is a unique city in many ways, starting with its urban planning made of mazes of alleys connecting squares and plazas with various shapes and reminding of the European medieval cities. This is quite different from the geometrical plan preferred everywhere else by the Spanish colonists! La Habana Vieja is a fine example of this concern for orderliness, the old city being articulated around large squares connected by paved streets and lined with arcades or portals. These shaded arcades are one of the manifestations of the adaptation of the architecture to the tropical climate of Cuba, just like the structure of the colonial houses. Recognizable by their tile roofs, often red, and their whitewashed adobe walls, these houses are organized around a cool patio and have high ceilings and large openings with bars 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! Don't miss the beautiful houses with wrought iron or turned wood windows on Plaza San Juan de Dios in Camagüey. The treasures of Havana are protected by its incredible system of fortifications, composed of a multitude of forts, bastions and batteries linked together. 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 its plan with diamond-shaped projections. The impressive Castillo del Morro (San Pedro de la Roca) in Santiago was built by Giovanni Battista Antonelli, one of the most famous military engineers of the time. Built on a rocky promontory, the fortress is organized in a system of superimposed terraces connected by flights of stairs. Each platform has powder magazines, guard posts and garrison barracks. Geometric shapes, symmetry and respect for proportions are the key words of this Cuban transposition of the codes of the Italian Renaissance military architecture. Then, the colonial cities will be adorned with the abundant finery of the baroque as shown in Havana by the sumptuous Palacio de los Capitanes Generales and the impressive cathedral

, with its undulating façade punctuated by columns of various sizes. Inside, don't miss the masterpieces of sculpture and goldsmithing 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 period of sugar prosperity that the island experienced and of which Trinidad, with its Palacio Brunet and Cantero, is the beautiful representative. To discover the sugar activity that made its planter families so rich, go to the Valley of Los Ingenios, which still houses 75 old sugar factories, including theold San Isidro de los Destiladeros plantation, a ruined hacienda that still preserves vestiges of its ovens, distilleries and irrigation systems, and especially its slave quarter... because we must never forget that the prosperity of this industry is inseparable from the exploitation that the colonists made of the slaves who came from Africa. Even more amazing is the city of Cienfuegos which was founded in 1819 by French planters who fled the revolts in Haiti. The city is a superb example of modern urban planning taking for the first time into account notions of natural ventilation and lighting to promote public hygiene. The original core is designed in a checkerboard pattern, forming 25 perfectly regular blocks of houses. The houses are one or two storeys high, with simple facades, but decorated with beautiful ironwork, as well as 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 the coffee culture. At the foot of the Sierra Maestra remain the archaeological and architectural remains of 171 coffee plantations or cafetales. These consist of the planter's house, the drying terrace, the production areas for grinding and roasting, the workshops and outbuildings, and still the slaves' quarters. The coffee processing system set up by the French also required important hydraulic infrastructures, whose cisterns and aqueducts are still visible. The La Isabelica plantation, rehabilitated as a museum, is a good example.

Architectural laboratory

The beginning of the 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... which put their stamp on it in a monumental way, to say the least, as is well illustrated by the Capitolio of Havana, an exact reproduction of the Capitol of Washington, whose dome rises to 91.50 m and whose 17 m high and 47 t statue symbolizing the Republic is the third largest in the world! Havana's famous Malecόn is also financed by Americans. Eclecticism is the preferred style to exalt 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 Stock Exchange with its Renaissance palace-like appearance, both in Havana, or the Palacio de Gobierno de Cienfuegos, whose red dome is unmistakable. The city is also home to the Palacio de Valle, which, under its orientalist finery, reveals Carrara marble, Venetian ceramics and European crystal. A mixture of genres that almost borders on the excessive in the chic neighborhoods of Havana. In Marianao, the streets are lined with ropes and trees and are lined with houses that look like Californian chalets, Venetian palaces and Bavarian castles! The Miramar district is famous for its "5th Avenue" lined with luxurious mansions

. Eclecticism then gave way to Art Nouveau. The most beautiful representatives of this style are the Gardens of the Tropical Brewery in Havana. This sublime recreational park is populated with astonishing pavilions, such as the Ensueno Pavilion with its star-shaped ceiling and ramps reminiscent of curves and plant interlacing, or such as this chapel built in an artificial cave of stone and cement. These amazing constructions are reminiscent of the work of the brilliant Antonio Gaudi. Still in Havana, go to 107 Calle Cardenas to discover one of the most beautiful Art Nouveau houses in the city, with its turquoise façade, its torso columns and its superb stylized ironwork. This art of decoration will be followed by the sobriety and geometry of Art Deco lines. The Bacardi building in Havana is the proudest representative of this, and it is also the first skyscraper in the city. Its silhouette in marble, red granite and polychrome ceramics recalls the New York buildings. The Edificio Lopez Serrano, the Fausto Theater and the Sierra Maestra movie theater are other beautiful Art Deco examples. This period was also marked by a very strong increase in the urban population. It was during this period that barbacoas multiplied, a term used to designate the transformation of colonial houses that were cut in half in the direction of height and width to create apartments, and whose loggias were bricked up to create mezzanines that overloaded the structures in a heap of cramped spaces reminiscent of meat cooked in its own juices... a barbacoa! The 1940s marked the birth of the modern movement. Although they had been trained until then in the codes of the Renaissance and the Beaux-Arts, the young Cuban architects returned from their trips to the United States, Brazil or 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 Treaty of the Five Orders of Architecture! Inspired by Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe and Richard Neutra (to whom we owe the astonishing Casa Schulthess, which looks like a design motel), these young architects favored fluid and pure forms, rejecting decorative devices and exploiting all the architectural potential of concrete, glass and steel. But to this very international modernism, they add, at the beginning, the rule of the 3 P's for patio-persia-portico, in order to adapt the architecture to the tropical identity of the island. Colors, lights and vegetation are very present. Then gradually the rationalist purity will take precedence over these tropical additions. Among the amazing 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 concrete techniques. It is one of the symbols of the Vedado, a neighborhood 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, who is close to Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer.

Since 1960

The 1960s were marked by the construction of one of the most amazing projects in Cuban history: the national art schools, symbols of the utopian ideals of the socialist revolution. The architects chosen for the project had carte blanche to express these values. The only constraint was the difficulty in finding resources and materials due to government regulations and the embargo imposed by the United States. The choice was therefore made to use brick and terra cotta tiles. 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 boxes winding along the sloping ground is called "the worm", while the dance school impresses with its aerial and dancing vaults. But it was the school of visual arts that was the most talked about. 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 sex of a woman 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 accents borrowed from Soviet architecture. The skyscrapers of the Malecόn, including the now-famous Edificio Giron, are the great representatives of this. This period was also marked by new urban and social experimentation, particularly in Havana. The Ciudad Camilo Cienfuegos is a first attempt at a city whose dwellings are surrounded by vegetation and service spaces, and whose streets and roads are intended to facilitate the home/work commute: a utopian project that will soon turn into a dormitory city. Just like the Alamar district, which is inseparable from the system of micro-brigades set up by the government. Based on the principle of self-construction, this system invited the inhabitants to build their own housing after their working hours. A brigade was composed of 33 workers who had to build a 3 to 5 storey building with 30 apartments. These buildings were made of prefabricated concrete. In addition to the exploitation of the population, the Alamar project and all similar projects became isolated dormitory towns that fell into disrepair extremely quickly, as concrete is not at all adapted to the tropical climate of the island. The low-cost housing blocks built in the heart of the Sierra del Rosario to house the reforestation workers are a glaring example. The deterioration of the political and social climate has also been accompanied by a stagnation in construction, from which the country is still struggling to emerge today. Materials are still extremely expensive and regulations for the architectural profession are very restrictive. A few projects are appearing, such as the Factoria Habana Art Galery designed by Abiel San Miguel in an old industrial building that has been rehabilitated; or those of the Albor Arquitectos agency, which often works on individual houses... 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 artists and architects want to reinvent their island!