Modern Architecture in Havana

The island of Cuba has a rich tradition of high-quality architecture unbroken from its Spanish colonial settlement through the country’s 20th-century republican era and subsequent socialist revolution. Cuba, with its prosperous ports, open immigration policies, and cosmopolitan society, absorbed architectural influences from Europe and North America and reinterpreted them for the tropical environment and local culture. The rise of international modernism coincided with a period of great prosperity in Cuba, stimulating a surge of extraordinary creativity by Cuban architects. The revolution of 1958 transformed all aspects of Cuban life and, in the 1960s, redirected architectural production into a phase of radical innovation in service of the new socialist society. Experimentation with new building materials was a hallmark of Cuban modern architecture, both before and after the revolution. Today, Havana is a repository of extraordinary modern buildings from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, but fifty years of poor maintenance and the predations of the tropical maritime climate have left Havana’s modernist legacy in peril; and while the Cuban government has an admirable record of historic preservation in the colonial core of Havana, mid-20th century buildings in other parts of the city have been neglected. What policies and technologies might best be deployed to save Havana’s modern architecture?