EXPERIMENTAL BUILDING AT MALECÓN AND F (HAVANA, 1967). THE ARCHITECTURAL EXPRESSION OF TRADITION AND MODERNITY IN REVOLUTIONARY CUBA

Abstract

Among the Brutalist architectures that relied on the exterior formalisation of the circulations as part of their sculptural language, the Experimental Building on Malecón and F in Havana (Girón Building, 1967) by Antonio Quintana Simonetti and Alberto Rodríguez Surribas stands out. A contemporary —or even an earlier— approach to similar European projects, this residential building became the first great experiment in modern architecture in Cuba and paved the way for the modernisation of the country after the triumph of the Revolution. A building as pioneering as it is little known, about which there are hardly any bibliographical reviews and access to documentation has not been possible, and which threatens ruin. The following text frames and offers an analytical and critical view of the Girón Building through unpublished graphic documentation based on a survey carried out in situ, with a twofold objective: on the one hand, the reading of a revolutionary architecture where the machine provokes an atypical spatial configuration, whose language and final result end up sublimating the idea that gave birth to the project without supplanting the architecture; on the other hand, the need to perpetuate —given the high degree of deterioration of the building— and the scarcity of sources, the legacy of its architecture, contextualising the project decisions with the ideas that emerged from the Revolution, the European and CIAM influences and their dialectic with the Cuban architectural tradition, the appearance of technology and the determined commitment of its creators.