A European Glance in the Mirror of Caribbean Modern Architecture

86 Docomomo N°33 September 2005 THE INTERPRETATION OF OPPOSITE POINTS of view between Europe and the Americas has frequently generated deep controversies. Remember the international Euro-American congresses on the Latin American baroque, ever since the first one held in Rome in 1980: European echoes versus specific entities. In fact, the question of the Latin American cultural sphere’s alternative use for discoveries that were impossible in Europe is analyzed in works such as Roberto Fernández’s in El laboratorio Americano : one of its premises is Burckhardt’s hypothesis according to which America could be the opportunity of shedding new light both on nature and on mankind. Numerous round-trips made by the architecture of our times, are studied by another brilliant Argentine historian, Jorge Francisco Liernur.1 America returns and increases our doubts, and vigorously questions our convictions. To quote Antonio Fernández Alba, “today’s man lives in territories of disenchantment,” “he inhabits spaces and accepts dwellings built with no project of place,” “he passes through the city with no possible identification” and “his biography is built around a miserable emptiness.”2Are modern dwelling’s conditions and the failure of urbanism and architecture based on the modern movement due to action or merely to omission? Many of us believe that modern architecture’s qualities are traces and clues to a landscape frustrated of a modern project that never was completed. THE MODERN MOVEMENT’S ARCHITECTURE is an ample garment covering a multitude of cities on the five continents; it bears witness to a historical stage convulsive yet also intermingled with innovative propositions that allowed cities from every latitude to live the paradox of realizing their specific modernizing project according to the disciplinary rules of a pluralistic and common international system. Latin America developed this fascinating AEUROPEAN GLANCE IN THE MIRROR OF CARIBBEAN MODERN ARCHITECTURE VICTOR PÉREZ ESCOLANO Docomomo N°33 September 2005 87 game of mirrors between World War II and the 1960s crisis. The Caribbean region, in its insular lands, actively partakes in the difficult integration process, although Brazilian and Mexican achievements were prevalent in this process. Investigating the Caribbean and its architecture is nonetheless interesting to appreciate some of its singular realities. Everybody knows the political but also cultural impact of Castro’s revolution on Europe. It would not be appropriate here to delve into this most significant power play, but it is nevertheless necessary to point out that it occurred for architectural culture as well. In the 1960s Cuba was the focus point of the complex Caribbean––and more generally Latin American––realities, and this excess of attention overshadowed the knowledge and discrimination acquired before 1959. LET US OBSERVE a journal very widely published at the time, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui , which devoted its attention (88/1960) to Havana’s Pilot Project by Town Planning Associates (Wiener, Sert et al.), a few years before it began covering the new situation with growing enthusiasm: the competition for the Playa Girón Victory’s monument (115/1964), the Art Schools (119/1965) or the broader subject of Cuban leadership within the Third World (140/1968). By then, J. M. Richards had already published his report in the venerable British journal Architectural Review (1962). These brief references cover the modern movement’s course from the TPA plans for Havana, a modern urbanism variation on the advanced CIAM, to Ricardo Porro’s neo-expressionism and experimentation for the Art School, masterpieces of the Revolution before it implemented a controlled and rigid system. NEARLY half a century later, our European outlook can carry on the Caribbean and Cuba itself with a renewed sense of perception, with the serene feeling of an expanded knowledge. This is due to the extraordinary contributions of the Caribbean world itself, persistently and efficiently introduced in the last few years. The case of architectural journals is significant: Arquitectura Cuba went through a serious crisis that was only partly overcome thanks to the efforts of Eduardo Luis Rodríguez and of Gustavo Luis Moré and his team, the publication Archivos de Arquitectura Antillana in Santo Domingo is just as successful and interesting as the most widely published Latin American journals. MODERNITY’S PREMISES IN THE CARIBBEAN have been carefully studied in the only book incorporating the Caribbean Architecture of the 20th century , written by Roberto Segre, the most prolific historian on the subject of Cuban architecture from the 1960s onwards.3This research, published as a book in Mexico and Cuba, was also edited in chapters in Archivos de Arquitectura Antillana . The fifth chapter of his analysis of Caribbean modernity (“La difícil simplicidad tropical”––the difficult tropical simplicity) had an initial version distributed worldwide by the Docomomo Journal .4The Dominican review is a crucial and extremely efficient instrument of integration, and academic work is also currently being carried out, with Panamanian Eduardo Tejeira-Davis’s dissertation at the University of Heidelberg.5 IN LATIN AMERICAN HISTORIOGRAPHY, the reaction to nineteenth century historicisms takes place repeatedly and, therefore, the process of architectural renewal occurs in different ways: regionalism of neo-colonialist or neo-indigenous expression, and formal innovation either of art deco persuasion or of proto-modernity, or primitive modernity, neither being especially affiliated to the modern movement.6The tardy decolonization process of the big Caribbean led the United States to take over as the dominant power in the region, where they put into practice their imperialist doctrine, as staged in the 1893 Columbine Fair in Chicago. According to Segre, “as soon as Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Haiti were occupied, the North American government created public works departments and began implementing basic social constructions, designed by this country’s architects. The solutions drawn from twenty years of experience in tropical zone construction were adjusted to the ‘Hispanic’ environment where ‘modern’ subjects were incorporated.”7 88 Docomomo N°33 September 2005 THIS EPISODE is not unimportant in the history of Latin American and Caribbean architecture, because extremely frustrating events stemmed from its illegitimate consecration. Remember for instance the international competition for the Columbus Lighthouse in Santo Domingo, a landmark in the history of the most famous competitions (Palace of the Society of Nations, Chicago Tribune), for which “the architects from the entire world” were summoned (1928). Over nineteen hundred of them entered the competition, coming from 44 different countries. Amongst the 453 projects of all kinds, a jury, chaired by Eliel Saarinen, selected ten for the final stage, among which several Russian constructivists; F. L. Wright was a jury member, and the prize was awarded to J. L. Gleave for an absurd project located somewhere between pseudo art deco and pseudo neo-maya, which was built decades later.8 A TWOFOLD DEVELOPMENT deserves to be pointed out: on the one hand, renewal processes rooted in heavily inert cultural models (neo-colonial or art deco) and on the other, those that are deeply linked to climatic and material conditions. For the latter, the question is solved. Thus, the bohío (the Indian hut), an ancestral shelter preserved in the modesty of local rural dwelling customs, conforms to a ‘common’ model of the region, displaying throughout the Caribbean9simple transculturation shapes intermingled with mixed-breed spatial structures. This is how identity values work their way in and produce some specific modernization experiments that do not mimic the modern movement’s formal archetypes to such an extent. This the case for instance with the figure of Eugenio Batista in Cuba, praised by Nicolás Quintana as follows: “throughout a whole period, he was one of the only Cuban architects who had a claim to the title . . . thanks to the value of his works, products of an inspiration stemming from our tradition and its purest spatial concepts.” Roberto Segre also praises him: “Eugenio Batista differs from his contemporaries in his ability to move away from the colony’s composition system and decorative repertoire and to adopt the conceptual attributes they were born of. By establishing the three P rule––patio, persiana [louver] and portico––as characteristic of the Cuban dwelling adjusted to a lifestyle and concrete ecological conditions, he does not take for granted the use of shapes necessarily stemming from the historical heritage.”10 The Falla House (1939) by Batista is therefore an excellent model to understand the specifically Caribbean kind of modernization. FORMAL COMPONENTS, the use of concrete and new typologies, etc. were unevenly incorporated to that basis; but the total modernization of Caribbean architecture takes place later, starting from 1945, under the influence of more brilliant works built in Brazil or Mexico, but also due to the presence of North American architects, in particular European immigrants, from Neutra to Gropius. Neutra’s case is especially interesting because he incorporates the weight of his conceptions to a biological discourse, which we would today call environmental, in perfect agreement with the requirements of a tropical climate, the region’s paradigm. To be precise, Neutra comes to Puerto Rico invited by Rexford G. Tugwell, a crucial figure of the TVA’s planning (Tennessee Valley Authority) under Roosevelt’s presidency, who in the 1940s also monitored the island’s public works plans. However, Neutra’s most significant work in the Caribbean is the Schullthess House in Havana, whose gardens were laid out by Roberto Burle Marx.11 IN CUBA, the creation of the Technical Group of Contemporary Studies (Agrupación Técnica de Estudios Contemporáneos, ATEC) reflects how architects who had innovative ideas, but were looking for an alternative to the more severe avant-garde groupings, could gather. The months Lluís Sert and his wife spent in Havana, from March 1939 to the moment they obtained forged Cuban passports that allowed them to leave for New York, were propitious to meetings that doubtless included discussions on the CIAM and GATEPAC, the Spanish organization, essentially Catalan, linked to CIRPAC. Cuban architects Eugenio Batista, Miguel Gastón, Nicolás Arroyo, Gabriela Menéndez, Tapia Ruano, Carlos Alzogaray, Beatriz Masó and Rita Gutiérrez, among others, participated in ATEC, which would ultimately join the international organization. The Cuban architects’ 89 Docomomo N°33 September 2005 participation in the CIAM started with the first postwar congress in 1947 (6th Congress in Bridgewater), where Eugenio Batista and Nicolás Arroyo were present. Batista once more, this time with Rita Gutiérrez (8th Congress in Hoddesdon), and then Nicolás Quintana for the last congresses (9th in Aix-en-Provence and 10th in Dubrovnik), would subsequently attend.12 SERT, BETWEEN 1942 AND 1959, practiced at the Town Planning Associates, with Paul Lester Wiener and two other partners, working hard both in Latin America and for the US War Department. Brazil, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela were their main fields of operation, supplemented by another Caribbean project (a hotel in Curaçao) which in the end was never realized. Nicolás Arroyo, who attended the 6th CIAM (1947), would later be the Public Works Minister for Fulgencio Batista’s second government, and pushed Sert to work in Cuba. In the first place, Sert worked with the National Dwellings Program in 1952. In the following years, via the Memorandum to the Minister, the TPA’s collaboration with the Cuban government involved mostly urbanism works, based on the ideas developed concerning functional cities adjusted to their environments, ‘city cores,’ civic centers and neighborhood units. From the ATEC’s womb, and from the Pro-Urbanism Patronage, simultaneously created with the motto “better cities, better citizens,” emerged several architects (Montolieu, Romañach, A. Quintana, Mantilla, among others) who officiated in positions of great responsibilities in the National Planning Committee (la Junta Nacional de Planificación) created by Arroyo and for which Sert and Lester Wiener were counselors. They studied Varadero, the Pine Trees Island, and Havana, whose Pilot Plan project had already been presented;13 Eastern Havana is the project’s only deferred effect, while thankfully other decisions, concerning the historical center for instance, were never carried out. BUT THE MODERN MOVEMENT’S ARCHITECTURE that can be seen, known, documented and preserved reveals the history of protagonists and of certain works, many of which, fortunately, have been preserved and form a precious heritage of the region’s recent history. Dominican González Sánchez is a contemporary of Cuban Eugenio Batista, also born with the century and trained in the United States where he acquired his professional skills. His office building Copello (1939) marks the beginning of his efforts, praised for the refined hotels Jaragua (1941, demolished) and Hamaca in Boca Chica (1951), to ‘tropicalize,’ as Gustavo Luis Moré would say, the international style.14 In 1955, González is the author of the decade’s most significant architectural event in the Dominican Republic under Trujillo, the Fair of Peace and Fraternity of the Free World (Feria de la Paz y Confraternidad del Mundo Libre). It is the best public architecture work of Santo Domingo’s urban development, which is supported by its public roads system and carries out other experiments in the Gazcue district. HOWEVER, DURING THIS PHASE, the works that best perform the modern movement’s postulates are built in Puerto Rico: Neutra, invited by Tugwell to participate in the school and hospital building programs with the Committee of Public Works’ Design, has a particularly potent influence. His collaborator, Henry Klumb, who had previously worked with Wright, permanently settles in the island, and other excellent Puerto Rican architects, such as Osvaldo Toro, Miguel Ferrer and J. Torregrosa, also participate. Here, the grounds for innovation are Condado y Santurce, and Toro y Ferrer design some buildings characteristic of San Juan’s modernization process, such as the Caribe Hilton hotel (1949) or the Supreme Court’s seat (1955). I think Henry Klumb’s contribution to the modernization of the Río Piedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico should be emphasized. It is mentioned in the Latin American Architecture since 1945 presentation prepared by Hitchcock for the MoMA in 1955. Besides drawing a new regulating plan in 1951, he was called on to design dozens of buildings on the campus, among which the General Library, the Museums of Anthropology, Art and History, the Student Center, the Architecture School, the Student Housing building, the Faculties of Social Science, Business and Management, and the Law School, among others, which altogether form a most essential ensemble. Textures, manipulations of light created 90 Docomomo N°33 September 2005 by brise-soleils, and subtle chromatic variations, added to the natural environment’s incorporation, are part of a program of modern and tropical architecture.15 LET US CONCLUDE by returning to the biggest island of the Caribbean, and its capital, where the modern movement’s architecture is luxuriant. Havana’s urban heritage, despite its degradation, truly exists; likewise with its 1940s and 1950s heritage. Strollers, and those who remember their strolls, can find excellent guides, in particular those to which Eduardo Luis Rodríguez has contributed.16 A late and copious art deco, with buildings such as the Bacardí (1930) or the López Serrano (1932), and many more sharply modern constructions, also inspired Batista’s surprising expressions, previously mentioned, or some attractive and rare experiments such as the Solimar building (1945) by Manuel Copado, or the workers’ settlement of Luyanó (1947), by P. Martínez Inclán, A. Quintana, M. Romañach and J. A. San Martín. 1947 is always referred to as being significant in the modernization process as the year when architecture students rebelled and burnt their school’s Vignolas.* Beyond its symbolic value, this destruction seems a gesture much less eloquent than the achievement of a major work, composed without restraint and absolutely modern: the Radiocentro building by Emilio del Junco, Miguel Gastón and Martín Domínguez. It is the fruit of a collaboration between two brilliant architects and the exiled Spanish architect Domínguez who, with his companion Carlos Arniches and engineer Eduardo Torroja, is the author of the Zarzuela Hippodrome’s stands (1935), one of the most significant modern architecture works in Spain. Later, he will collaborate with Ernesto Gómez Sampera and Bartolomé Bestard to design another landmark and symbol of Havana’s modern architecture: the FOSCA building (1956), the most important apartment house built during the period.17 Among so many interesting works, it would be hazardous to select architects and projects of that decade: Max Borges (architect’s personal house, 1950; Tropicana cabaret, 1951), Frank Martínez (Eight Brothers’ House, 1952), Ricardo Porro (Abad-Villegas House, 1954), Manuel Gutiérrez (Engineering Faculty of the Villanueva University, 1959)... Roberto Segre singles out the commercial courts’ building (Tribunal de Cuentes, currently the Ministry of the Interior’s seat), by Aquiles Capablanca and others, as “the decade’s most remarkable public work,” to the extent that Hitchcock compares it to Rio de Janeiro’s Ministry of Education and Health. For Eduardo Luis Rodríguez, it is the figure of Mario Romañach that is exceptional, associated with Silverio Bosch, for his renowned works and his intense relationships with the international figures present in Cuba; Neutra will praise his Vidaña House (1953), and Gropius will do the same with the Noval House (1949).18 This excellent domestic architecture spreads to positively urban works, such as El Vedado’s Medical Insurance building (1958) by Antonio Quintana, Beale, Rubio et Pérez Beato, preceded by the Odontologic Building, of brilliant volumetric and construction solutions. Antonio Quintana, who had already taken part in the Luyanó settlement, finds outstanding answers for different kinds of housing developments, that, according to Segre, provide “the best small-sized distribution diagrams, based on the rationalist experience and on the break with traditional classification and segregation of internal functions.”19 THE MODERN MOVEMENT’S ARCHITECTURE IN THE CARIBBEAN extends beyond the 1960 border, because it continues with the Cuban Revolution’s experiments. Eastern Havana or the University Campus City by J. A. Echevarria will prove it. This goes further still: when in 1963 the Congress of the International Architects’ Union takes place, the Cuban Pavilion (J. Campos and L. Medrano) that is erected on Street 23 is a copy of the Bacardí project in Santiago de Cuba (1957) by Mies van der Rohe. The normalization process of projects and prefabrication impede free experimentation that is more frequently considered as being ambiguous, as is obvious with the architecture devoted to public education.20 In the 1960s, architecture undergoes a critical episode throughout the world, which also affects the Caribbean. Translated by Isabelle Kite * Classic architecture handbooks by theoretician and architect Giacomo Barozzi De Vignola (1507–1573). ––TRANS. VICTOR PÉREZ ESCOLANO is an architect and has a Ph.D. in history of architecture. He is chair of the Department of history of architecture and urbanism at the University of Seville, president of the Modern Architecture Foundation and member of technical committees of the Andalusia Center of Modern Art. He is the author of many books on the architecture of the modern movement, among which Guía de Arquitectura España 1920-2000 (Madrid: Ministerio de Fomento/Centro de Publicaciones, 1998), Red and White. Dwellings for the Urban Landscape in Seville (Athens: Untimely Books, 2003) and España. La Condición Marginal de la Arquitectura Moderna en España (Madrid: Información e Historia, 1998). 91 Docomomo N°33 September 2005 NOTES 1 Roberto Fernández. El laboratorio americano. Arquitectura, Geocultura y Regionalismo (Madrid: Gedisa, 1998). Jorge Francisco Liernur, “Un nuovo mondo per lo spirito nuovo: le scoperte dell’America Latina da parte della cultura architettonica del XX secolo,” Zodiac 8 (Milan: 1992–1993), reissued in Escritos de arquitectura del siglo 20 en América Latina (Madrid: Tanais, 2003). 2 Antonio Fernández Alba. En las gradas de Epidauro (Madrid: Ediciones Libertarias, 1987). 3 Roberto Segre, Italian-Argentine architect, drew close to the Cuban process after the Revolution. His many publications were essential both inside the island and abroad. Some were published in Europe, especially in Spain, Italy and France. For years, his publications expressed a clear operative approach, consisting in a theoretical and pedagogic compromise with the long revolutionary process. His widely distributed review of the first decade, called Cuba, La arquitectura de la Revolución (Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 1970), was issued simultaneously in Cuba, Italy and Spain. 4 Roberto Segre, Arquitectura antillana del siglo XX (Mexico: UAMXochimilco/FCE, 1996; Havana/Bogota: Arte y Literatura/National University of Colombia, 2003). It was also published in chapters, for the Spanish and English versions, in Archivos de Arquitectura Antillana , issues 4/1997 to 10/2000 (Santo Domingo). The book is the result of the research initiated thanks to the grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation awarded to Roberto Segre in 1985. At the same time he published his first articles on Caribbean architecture (“Un siglo de arquitectura antillana,” in Arte moderno en América Latina , Damián Bayón, ed., Madrid: Taurus, 1985), in parallel with his works concerning Latin America in general, drawing mostly from his courses at the University of Sao Paulo ( América Latina fim de milênio. Raíces e perspectivas de sua arquitectura , Sao Paulo: Studio Nobel, 1991; in Spanish, Arte y Literatura : Havana, 1999). His previous article on Caribbean modernity is “Difficult simplicity: a tropical paradox. Antillean rationalism in the Caribbean,” Docomomo Journal 13 (1995): 51–53. 5 Eduardo Tejeira-Davis, Roots of Modern Latin American Architecture: the Hispano-Caribbean Region from the Late 19th Century to the Recent Past , Ph.D. dissertation, University of Heidelberg, 1987. 6 Ramón Gutiérrez, Arquitectura y urbanismo en Iberoamérica (Madrid: Cátedra, 1983). The references to proto-modernity or to a primary modernity as being nascent trends not strictly belonging to the modern movement, are herein presented, for the Caribbean case, in Roberto Segre, “Preludio a la modernidad: convergencias y divergencias en el contexto caribeño (1900–1950),” in Arquitectura neocolonial. América Latina, Caribe, Estados Unidos , Aracy Amaral, ed. (Mexico: FCE, 1994). For Havana, the subject was studied in Carlos Sambricio and Roberto Segre, Arquitectura en la ciudad de La Habana. Primera modernidad (Madrid: Electa/Colegios de Arquitectos de Galicia, Asturias, Castilla y Léon este y León, 2000). In Segre, Arquitectura antillana , 127, this interpretation is emphasized because it suggests some parallels between American neo-colonialism and the same period’s Spanish regionalism, with the 1929 Spanish-American Fair in Seville, a privileged place for experimentation. 7 Segre, Arquitectura antillana , 128. This way of doing was particularly well studied for the Puerto Rican case: Enrique Vivoni-Farage and S. Álvarez Curbelo, Hispanofilia. Arquitectura y vida en Puerto Rico 1900–1950 (San Juan: University of Puerto Rico/AACUPR, 1998). 8Concurso Internacional. Faro en Memoria de Cristobal Colón (Santo Domingo: A. Kesley, 1931). The Columbus Lighthouse International Competition was widely covered by international journals but works providing a detailed historical analysis still need to be published. 9 Whose appeal generally makes it a common souvenir for European or North American tourists, as shown by the repeated issues of the book Caribbean Style , Jack Berthelot, Suzanne Slesin, Stafford Cliff et al. (London: Thames & Hudson, 1985). 10 Nicolás Quintana, “Evolución histórica de la arquitectura en Cuba. Sus factores esenciales,” La Enciclopedia de Cuba , tome V (Madrid: Playor, 1978): 93. Segre, Arquitectura antillana , 186. 11 For Roberto Segre, Neutra is the figure who had the greatest influence on Caribbean architects, precisely “owing to his studies on the adjustment to climate and on the psychological effects of shapes and spaces on man’s life” (Segre, Arquitectura antillana , 197). Two of Neutra’s books were initially published in Latin America: Architecture of Social Concern in Regions of Mild Climate (Sao Paulo: 1948) and Realismo biológico. Un nuevo Renacimiento humanístico en arquitectura (Buenos Aires: 1958), and other significant texts were immediately translated (for example his most important conceptual work: Survival Through Design -Planificar para sobrevivir -, 1954), and then amply distributed in Spanish-language countries. His son Dion Neutra, in his prologue to the Spanish edition of his father’s autobiographical Life and Shape , 1962 ( Vida y Forma , 1972) comments on “how much my father felt proud and satisfied when we were granted the privilege of realizing our first work on Spanish-language grounds: a house in Havana (Cuba), which was completed in 1956.” 12 ATEC has hardly been studied, much less distributed. It is part of the period immediately prior to the Revolution that was left in the dark. References to these years were cursorily gathered in the work written in exile by Nicolás Quintana in “Evolución histórica de la arquitectura en Cuba. Sus factores esenciales,” La Enciclopedia de Cuba , and in memories collected in “Pasado. Los años 50. Presente y futuro,” Archivos de Arquitectura Antillana 10 (June 2000): 86–101. A detailed study of the CIAM can be consulted in Erich Mumford, The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism, 1928–1960 (Cambridge, Mass., London: The MIT Press, 2000). In the book, Sert’s important role is made obvious, starting with his presence at the third congress in Brussels (1930), as well as his various and significant Latin American contributions since 1937. It also refers to Sert’s wish to extend the organization to the American continent, both in the United States and in Mexico and Brazil in 1945. The presence of Cuban architects Batista and Arroyo at Bridgewater in 1947 coincides with that of Argentineans Jorge Ferrari Hardoy and Jorge Vivanco. The recent exhibition held in Barcelona is an excellent opportunity to study Sert’s American stage, Sert 1928–1978. Medio siglo de arquitectura. Obra Completa , Josep M. Rovira, ed. (Barcelona: Foundation Joan Miró, 2005). See also Josep M. Rovira, José Luis Sert 1901–1983 (Milan: Electa, 2000). 13 Josep M. Rovira et Timothy Hyde focus their particular studies on the Cuban TPA’s propositions, in Rovira, Sert 1928–1978 . Roberto Segre’s critical position can be seen, for example, in the articles “La Habana de Sert: CIAM, ron y cha cha cha,” Dana 37–38 (Buenos Aires: 1995): 120–125, or, in a more specific context, “La Habana siglo XX: espacio dilatado y tiempo contraído,” Ciudad y Territorio. Estudios territoriales XXVIII (110), (Madrid, 1996): 713–731. A very recent insight into the values of the TPA’s propositions is Francisco Gómez’s as yet unpublished work, “Todo era posible en La Habana. El Plan de Sert & Town Planning Associates para la Habana de 3.000.000 de habitants,” 2005. 14 Gustavo Luis Moré, “Guillermo González: a los 82 años de su nacimiento,” Arquivox/GNA 3–4, 1984–1985: 13. North American studies have documented the Jaragua hotel, a great success of the city. 15 San Juan siempre Nuevo: Arquitectura y modernización en el siglo XX , Enrique Vivoni-Farage, ed. (San Juan: University of Puerto Rico/AACUPR, 2000); M. L. Moreno, La Arquitectura de la Universidad de Puerto Rico. Recinto de Río Piedras (San Juan: University of Puerto Rico, 2000). 16 In a journey that takes him from Darmstadt (1992) to Seville (1993, 1998) and New York (2000), Eduardo Luis Rodríguez, sometimes in collaboration with María Elena Martín Zequeira, has published a succession of excellent architecture guides. The last reference is The Havana guide: modern architecture 1925–1965 (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000). Likewise, “The Architectural Avant-Garde: From Art Deco to Modern Regionalism,” a monograph devoted to Cuba, The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts 22 (Miami: 1996): 254–277; and Eduardo Luis Rodríguez, La Habana. Arquitectura del Siglo XX (Barcelona: Blume, 1998). 17 A thorough work on architect Martín Domínguez would be necessary. The monographic issue that was devoted to him years ago by the Nueva Forma journal of Madrid cannot be enough: Stephen W. Jacobs, “Martín Domínguez y colaboradores,” Nueva Forma 74 (Madrid: 1971). 18 Segre, Arquitectura antillana , 236. Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Latin American Architecture Since 1945 (New York: MoMA/Simon & Schuster, 1955), 73. Rodríguez, La Habana. Arquitectura del Siglo XX , chapter 10. Of relevance to understand the Cuban capital’s architectural complexity was the meeting at the origin of the publication Aprendiendo de La Habana. Una guía visual , Francisco Gómez, ed. (Seville: Junta de Andalucía, 2004). 19 This aspect also aroused some interest in Europe. See Architettura e istruzione a Cuba , Giorgio Fiorese, ed. (Milan: Clup, 1980). 20 The synthesis achieved by the Retiro Médico is outstanding, and Roberto Segre praises it in that it specifically designates minimum functional spaces as being principles “also valid for dwellings of the social housing type.” Roberto Segre, La vivienda en Cuba en el siglo XX, República y Revolución (Mexico: Concepto, 1980), 21–22.