Snap your fingers and its 1958 with 40 years of fading colors. Castro took over the new Intercontinental Hotel (today the Habana Libre) and set-up his government that year. A little while latter, he nationalized all foreign holdings and took the new casinos away.

Castro's unintended results: perfect preservation of the few modern highrises and the extensive neo-classical vernacular. Urban renewal of the 1960's never happened to Havana. In the Soviet style, the slabs of apartment buildings are in the suburbs.

To fall in love with this time warp, set aside Sunday to walk the streets of Havana. The pace is easy. All the people relax. They sit in their living rooms that open to the narrow streets. Children run. Sensual men and women lean on the balconies or door jambs, just like the thousands of pictures.

One in 50 ancient concrete houses have melted away in parts. Most of the street facades are standing. Some of the 3^rd floors are missing or the storefront is hollow. People live inside with a single light bulb, fan, stove and plumbing.

The Cubans are quiet in speech. Recently, with the improved economy, the music has become thunderous, but only one house in 500 can afford a boom box. Car horns don't work as well as bicycle bells.

The streets smell of nothing which is good and bad. No sewer stench, but no aromas from a grill or an oven. Diesel occasionally chokes the throat.

Not a single advertisement. What can be said? It is a major city of two million people. The only signs are carved into the concrete of the façade. This is an exaggeration of fact, but the signlessness is the afterimage in memory.

The two other influential "no's" shape the architectural territory uniquely. No parked cars. No electric lights. The famous big American cars of the 1940's rumble on the main streets along with the Soviet-made Ladas. Now, Korean, French and Italian-made taxis wait at the hotels, but most cars are parked behind a gate or around main public squares. The buildings are free of automotive clutter at the base. The streets are crisp, square, open air tunnels. Metallic reflections and brassy colors are absent.

All interiors, except the major tourist hotels, appear illuminated by the minimum number of 40 watt bulbs. Lobbies, stores, schools and museums will utilize only daylight, if possible. No uniformity provided by the fluorescent ceiling. Light comes from somewhere - the sky, the courtyard, the window. The balcony is not just for view and air, but a place of light.

I have known easy going people, daylight, carless streets and wordless buildings before. But in Havana, the consistency changes the manner of being with the city. The eye wanders slowly. Facades and faces are seen. Complexions and decoration provide visual rest and joy.

Havana forced me to finally see the façade as a creative endeavor. The Havana Centro is mile after mile of three story townhouses in concrete. The vast majority are in a neo-classical style with 2 or 3 columns of Greek orders freely interpreted on the ground floor with decorative balconies and window above. No cornice, just a simple end to the wall.

In the United States, the façade either helps reinforce the chunkiness or sculpture of the building volume or shows columns, floors and spaces behind the glass. In Havana, the façade is a painting in concrete. It is composed. You can feel the architects or builders thinking about all the parts. The "faces" of the street compete for the status of most beautiful.

A second great lesson of Cuba is the concrete roof or shell. I have seen these roofs in magazines and history books about post WWII architecture in South and Central America. They are 4 to 6 inch thick and can be flat, tipped, arched, and complex curved.

Again my experience in the United States is that the concrete roof coats the imaginary volume like the Kennedy Airport TWA Terminal or the famous lower Queen Anne blob building. Or the concrete is part of a mathematical 3-D gird of columns and slabs. Not coating the volume, but building up the volume through layers of floors.

These Cuban slabs are free and sometimes seem barely supported by a few skinny columns without visible beefing up at the moment connections. They cantilever seemingly beyond structural possibility. Free of the conceptual volume, they are composed and shaped for the architect's own pleasure. They arch over the bus stop. They flop on columns like pancakes on a stick. They zigzag over the doorway. They open to the sky here and then there.

For the architectural tourist, other architectural wonders abound such as the Soviet embassy in the heavy-handed concrete sculptural forms of the 1960s and 1970s. Richard Porro's 1973 visual arts complex at the Institute for the Arts is one of a handful of international experiments in Dogon village making ala Aldo Van Eyck's theories and practice. Hemingway's estate is purely a dreamy place to write, wander and drink. Spanish neo-classical monuments surround the Capitol building.

Run, jump, fly, sail or swim ASAP to Havana. The Europeans and Canadians have arrived and everything is in motion for the restoration of Havana. Already stucco coatings and highend paints have been applied. Travel before the empty lots are filled with new structures. Arrive before the Cuban-American money can flow.

Glenn Weiss

November, 1998

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