RICARDO PORRO HIDALGO 1925-2014Ricaro Porro, Cuban architect, died December 25 of heart failure in Paris. He was the leading creator of the most outstanding and controversial architectural achievement of the Cuban Revolution - the Escuelas Nacionales de Arte.Ricardo Porro Hidalgo was born in 1925 in Camaguey, Cuba. He grew up in the comfort of a provincial bourgeois existence. As a young man he moved to the capitol where he studied architecture at the Universidad de la Habana. There he became acquainted with Fidel Castro who was law school best friend of the brother of Porros fiance Elena Freyre de Andrade. And the three young people shared many a mid-day dinner and boisterous conversation in the Freyre de Andrade household.After Porros graduation he went to Paris. There he became inspired by Cuban painter Wifredo Lam, whose paintings explored cubanidad, Cubas multi-cultural heritage, through a Afro-Cuban influenced iconography. Lam was also a committed Marxist. Under Lams influence Porro now condemned International Style modernism as practiced by Cubas prominent architects, and expounded an organic modernism that would more honestly express cubanidad. While a great admirer of Antonin Gaudi and Frank Lloyd Wright, Porros organic architecture became uniquely his own.As the 1950s unfolded he progressively adopted a more negrista position, declaring that Cuba deserved una arquitectura negra. He had also become a committed Marxist.And during those same years he became increasingly involved in the clandestine movement against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, often putting himself at great risk. After the failed General Strike of April 1957, his arrest was immanent. Porro and his young wife fled for exile in Venezuela. I do not fight with guns. I fight with only my words and my architecture, he explained.With the triumph of the Revolution, Porro returned to Cuba and brought along two Italian colleagues from Venezuela, Roberto Gottardi and Vittorio Garatti. The three young architects went on to create what would most prominently make their place in history, Las Escuelas Nacionales de Arte, sited on what had been Havanas most exclusive country club. They agreed on three fundamental principles: respect for the existing verdant landscape, build with terracotta brick and tiles, and for the structure employ the - Catalan vault - which with its potential for plastic form became the formal signature for the Escuelas Nacionales de Arte.The five schools were conceived in an inspired moment. Porro described it as, the moment, common to every revolution, during which the marvelous becomes everyday and the Revolution appears ms surrealista que socialista. In Porros two schools, the Escuela de Danza Moderna expressed the ambiguity and violence of the revolutionary moment, and the Escuela de Artes Plasticas expressed most fully the arquitectura negra he so longed to delineate in architectural form.But in a short time the art schools and their architects fell from grace and were subjected to attacks. Porro was particularly singled out for abuse by architectural critic Roberto Segre who with inflated Marxist jargon, accused Porro of being an elitist cultural aristocrat, whose work exhibited a "narcissistic and egocentric bourgeois formation.But ideology was only a smokescreen. Porro had an enemy in Antonio Quintana, the architect in charge of architectural design for the new Ministry of Construction. Quintana was an unreconstructed modernist who saw the organic expressive forms rising from the country club landscape as unforgiveable architectural heresy and threat. The attacks by Quintana and his subordinates brought construction to a halt in 1965 and the five Catalan vaulted schools lay in various stages of use and abandonment, and until recently with some parts literally overgrown by the jungle.Castro, who considered the schools to be la mas bella academia de arte de todo el mundo, met privately with Porro and tried to rectify matters. But the situation was intractable. Castro reluctantly granted Porros request for permission to depart. And in 1966 he and his family moved to Paris where Andre Malraux helped him find shelter and work. He rebuilt his architectural practice. Ironically, the major part of Porros work serves the working class Communist banlieue of Paris. I have always been an architect for the workers, immigrants, and the poor he stated.In late 1980s Cuba, perestroika and glasost were taking on a cubanidad. By 1996 all was forgiven, and Ricardo Porro was officially invited back to Cuba with much acclaim and celebration, the first of several repeat visits. In Fall of 1999 Fidel Castro declared for the rehabilitacin y completamiento of the five art schools, a process still slowly moving forward.In his later years, during an interview with Alma Guillermoprieto, she asked, What do you consider your greatest achievement? Porro replied, I consider my greatest achievement to be the adventure of knowing another person as deeply and as profoundly as I know myself my wife Elena.Ricardo Porro is survived by his wife Elena Freyre de Andrade Porro, his daughter Gabriela Porro.

Looking Back: An Interview with Ricardo Porro, Part 1Published: January 29, 2015A long-ago conversation evokes the late architects wide-ranging intellect and wit

Ricardo Porro in an undated photoCourtesy ricardoporro.comIn 2000, Jorge Fernndezcurrently director of the Wifredo Lam Center and the upcoming 12th Bienal de La Habanasat down with Ricardo Porro, the lead architect of the National Art Schools (now ISA). The conversation spanned two days. In memory of Porro, here is the first of two excerpts from that interview, which originally appeared in the Cuban magazineRevolucin y Culturain honor of Porros 80th birthday.What was the significance for you of the late 1940s and early 1950s? Tell us about people like Frank Martnez and Nicols Quintana, and the students push to renew and change the cultural context around them.The reality is that Frank Martnez, Nicols Quintana and I were very close friends, and we wanted to turn the world upside down ... And of course we did crazy things, like burning "Violas" in the School of Architecture libraryfor me a Nazi act, completely horrible. Young people do terrible things, thats for sure, but we wanted to turn the world upside down. There was a close relationship between us and we wanted to change things. So we started a revolt in college, we brought in Gropius, who knows ... We wanted to transform the School of Architecture, to make it no longer academic. It was a logical thing for young people. The young have to be rebellious, and we were rebellious.

At that time, in the 1950s, Hugo Consuegra, one of the emblematic artists of the group Los Once, very linked to your work, defined you as the great polemistthe man who thought the Cuban architecture of the time had fallen into emptiness, in a lethargy, and that this country needed changes, to be modernized from the philosophical and artistic points of view. What can you tell me? How would you assess these events, seen over time?Look, I think theres an essential problem: the notion of changing the world. The young man with no desire to change the worldhes not young. For that reason, in many cases we supported trends that today we consider horrific: the trend for a modern, aggressive architecture, which seen over time strikes me as very bad. In the 1940s and 1950s there were a few of us who outlined a fresh look at culture and architecture: Mario Romaach, Emilio del Junco, Eugenio Batista, Nicols Quintana, and Frank Martinez. The architectural work of the 1950s was very bad. This was the decade for the "cocalization" of Cuba, and it bothers me a lot: everything done in La Rampa, on Linea Street, was pure Coca Cola. Hugo Consuegra speaks of precisely the spirit of revolt I had, its true.

Were you closer to writers andartists, in terms of the avant-garde, that to the architects of the time?Yes, absolutely. I had influences in my life far above Le Corbusier. For example, Thomas Mann, who to me represented the great humanism of the 20th century. Without a doubt, the humanist attitude has always stirred my passionsthe technicist attitude seemed like something repulsive. I never liked it. I wanted an attitude that valued the human being, and that was what I found in the contact with writersthe contact with Lezama [the poet Jos Lezama Lima], whom I knew very well, and whom I valued as an exceptional discovery in my life. Lezama gave me his gookLa expresin americana(The American Expression), with the dedication: To Ricardo Porro, who brings together the cloister, the rain barrel, and the ogive [a pointed architectural arch]. That phrase, purelezamiana, encapsulates the world that interested me. I also had the opportunity to meet Picasso, who received me when I was a young student in Paris, and he taught me more than many architects did. Really, my great learning experiences were my conversations with one of the artists who single-handedly changed 20th-century art. So do you thinkthat modernism contributed more in the visual arts than in architecture? Im also interested in hearing about your first contact with the great rationalists of the era.

I wanted to work with Le Corbusier, so I met him and he said, All right, work with me. Then he asked how long I wanted to stay. I told him a year, and he said: Not a year, five years or nothing. I accepted, but then I started to see what his students did. They more or less copied the teacher, they talked and made elaborate sketches . . . And my spirit of revolt, the need to be myself, my individualism, took me out of there. I decided never to return to his office and to train myself. My preparation was the Sorbonnethe study of philosophy, of the humanities in general. That interested me much more than working in an architects office where I would learn only how to be like themaestro. I preferred other things. And Europe gave me a different vision, a different training. Perhaps my contact with the old continent made it so that, when I returned to Cuba, I immersed myself in what to me was the essence of Cuba, as opposed to the aristocratic world. I wanted the essence of blackness, the Afro-Cuban influence. I had already experienced this to some extent with my friend [artist Wifredo] Lam. This, then, inspired the creation of my art schools.Rationalism had nothing to do with me. Although I started being a rationalist. . . I remember that I made a houseI designed the project when I was still a student, and then I built it. This work retained the influence of major modernist architects of the time. Then I went to Europe to study. I remember showing it to my teacher, Franco Albini, in Milan. He waited until there were a lot of people around and then made his criticism"Too pretty"in English.It was a shock, but he did me a great favor. He said: "You act like an old man. You make no mistakes, you dont try for mistakes. You reach for accuracy, for precision. Make some mistakes!" And that thing he saidthat Make some mistakes!was a sort of permission he gave me to go a little crazy. That was fundamental for my life. More than ever I did what I had previously censured. I changed. I decided to try making other sorts of things, to throw myself into works that were a lot less perfect but more creative. Thats how I starteda start that I consider really healthy, really good. It made me modify my admiration for Mies van der Rohe, who was quite in fashion at the time, or Le Corbusier in his early work. All that changed immediately, and I began to try, desperately, to be myself.

Ricardo Porro in Caracas, Venezuela, 1958. Photo: Paolo Gasparini, as seen in the 2011 documentaryUnfinished SpacesCourtesy Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray,Unfinished SpacesWhen did you startbeing yourself?

Something happened that for me was fundamental. I had to go to Venezuela, where I was a professor, and where I was deeply immersed in teaching, but the Revolution triumphed and I wanted to return to Cuba. And then there was the shock of the romantic moment in this process. That was my mortal leap, like in the circus, and I made two schools, which were very helpful for understanding, a little, what architecture means: one, an architecture that speaks of eternal human problems, and the other that expresses a certain moment in civilization.The one that speaks of the eternal problems of humanity is the School of Visual Arts. What is the School of Visual Arts? I tried to express something that didnt reflect my own origins, but was something counter to my origins.in this romantic process, it was my somersault, as do the circus, and made two schools, which were helpful to understand a bit how it mean in architecture: one speaking of human eternal problems, and the other expressing a moment of civilization. The speaker of human eternal problems is the School of Visual Arts. What else is the School of Visual Arts? I tried to express what was not my own origin, ie to reveal against my origin.The architecture that existed in Cuba then, and that people were trying to make, was a continuation of an aristocratic architecture. And I realized that the Revolution implied a radical change; the aristocracy was not what artists should express. How could an artist reflect the culture of a part of the population that never had its own language in architecture because they were not allowed to? I refer, of course, the black heritage of this country. Then I started thinking about a fertility goddess, a goddess of the dawn of civilization; I thought of Ochn, an Aphrodite or Gaea.And my school is something of that. If you like, its a sculpture that Ive always loved, which is the Artemis of Ephesus, a goddess with many overlapping breasts. I tried to make a feminine building, but also (because I had been influenced by the urban planning of Venice) a citybut a city that became Eros, a city that meant love. So how did I interpret it? By making it so that all the classrooms, all the different workshop spaces were like a theater arena. In turn the theater arena was like an egg, or a breastthe egg that is the origin of the world, the origin of life. And the breast too has to do with that initiation into the world, the breastfeeding at birth. I realized that by doing this, I had conceived, in a pure, simple form, humanitys eternal problem: Eros.With you National Art Schools project, how were you able to reconcilethe relationship between utopia and aesthetic vanguard in the 1960s?I think a utopia stops being a utopia in the moment it becomes a reality. Utopia is when you want to do something and it doesnt succeed. Undeniably, I was given the facilities to create what could have been a untopia. I was given such a wonderful opportunity, and I was able to realize it. So its not a utopia, its a realitya reality that is inserted into, that gets inside the country. I think that its rooted in the essence oflo cubano.Next: Porro on the thinking behind his School of Modern Dance, and his first return to Cuba decades later.

Ricardo Porro in an undated photoCourtesy ricardoporro.comJorge A. Fernndez TorresJorge A. Fernndez Torresgraduated in Art History from Havana University in 1992. He is the curator and director of the Wifredo Lam Center of Contemporary Art and director of the Havana Biennial, and a professor at the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA).Looking Back: Ricardo Porro, Part 2Published: February 05, 2015On tarantulas, the dialectic of opposites, and his designs for the National Art Schools

Ricardo Porro, appearing in the filmUnfinished Spaces, 2011, by Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin MurrayCourtesy Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin MurrayIn memory of the architect, who died in December at the age of 89, heres the second of two excerpts from an interview by Jorge Fernndez, done in 2000, that appeared in the Cuban magazineRevolucin y Cultura.The symbol is very powerful in your work; the form does not exist in the same way. How do you handle all significant possibilities in the artistic creation?. . .

For me, the School of Dance is male,macho, in the sense that its something epic, triumphant, something glorious, ethical, and explosive. I think the opposition of male and female, good and evilindeed, the meaning of oppositesis something that is inherent in mankind. Theres a phrase in the fragments of Heraclitus that says, "the name of the bow is life and its work is death."

There is a constant in the universe, and thats the union of opposites. This conflict can be found in the Catholic religion, between God and the devil, and between good and evil; in the sense of thesis and antithesis in Hegels philosophy; and in the interaction between yin and yang in Chinese culture. Marx, after taking Hegels dialectic and building his own philosophical method, speaks of opposites and the struggle of opposites. Janus is the god with two heads, one looking to the past and the other to the future. Theres a key with the name or letter Alpha, and the other side bearing the letter Omega, beginning and end together, unified. And that is an essential problem of human existence: opposites together.

And I have used these ideas in other architectural works I've done later. For example, in a school I did in Montreuil, near Paris, I designed the faade as two beasts: a bar becomes a male beast and the other a female beast, as if the male were to cover the female, and in the middle there is a ying and yang reaching the ground. When you enter, theres a tree of life, and when you go to the back, theres a scissors. The building becomes a pair of scissors, that is, a symbol of death, the grim reaper cutting life. The tree of life is its opposite, both of them in the same building. In these school buildings it wasnt so much the sense of opposition that interested methey simply attempt to affirm life.

In the School of Dance I looked for a sense of exaltation at the entrancethat is, the vaults rising in an exalting manner, as in the Byzantine architecture. Then, when you pass through the central plaza, theres glass, broken as if from a punch. Its the symbol of the breakdown of that moment. When I walk through the inner colonnades theres an agonizing sense, because there are arrows going in all directions which should provoke the anguish that I felt at that romantic moment in the Revolutionthe sense of danger that so much energy might stop, or that something bad could happen. Then you enter the dance studios, and the notion of exaltation is reiterated. That is, if you want, theres more composition. In the other school, the Visual Arts, its Eros in the Dance, not Thanatos. I wanted a mystery, for things to be not so clear, in the nature of a jungle--consuming the world because thats its creative nature.

Ricardo Porro, School of Modern Dance, 196264 Ricardo Porro, courtesy Revue DAS. . .Please talk a bit about the Visual Arts and Dance buildings in the context of your life at the time.

The 20th century saw many social changes that had no expression in architecture. Russian Constructivism was the gestation of the dynamics of a movement, but it left no buildings behind, except the Soviet pavilion of theExposition Internationalein Paris. For me, the Revolution was a fundamental problem. That is, I lived profoundly, like two sensations that were in the air. The exaltation I felt when I saw a plaza where a million people could gather in a state of near ecstasythis I tried to create here [in the School of Visual Arts], to convey an explosion, as if there were some winds from below with a centrifugal, crazy force that pieced the air with domes. I did columns that didnt go all the way upI made the tops black, to create the sensation that everything was broken and flying, as in an explosion.In the other building, the Dance, I brought a sense that when students danced, they could feel that sense of exaltation, could play with the movement of the dance. Because Ive always believed that architecture means creating a poetic framework for human action, that its important to establish a dialectic between what the interior of the building says and the image that one imposes on it. I wanted thesala de la Danzato symbolize excitement. It also had a second aspect: when a dancer performed agrand jete, looking up with the movement of the arm and the body, that the domes themselves would rise up in a crazy way and leap through the airexploding as if the dancer, using the force of his body in his leap, caused the architecture itself to expand up and out. For example, the wall is on a point, in the interior, and then comes I wanted the dance hall to symbolize excitement and also had a second aspect, when a dancer performed agrandjete, looking up with the movement produced by his arm and his whole body, so crazy inflated domes and these took over the air, explode as if the dancer, deploying his strength through the jump, would have caused the expulsion of architecture out. For example, the wall is at a point, inside, and then comes a passage of openwork, and then the whole roof appears. This solution, from the architectural point of view, creates the illusion of being caused by the force of the dancing performed there, and plays with the ambiguity of different meanings.

Ricardo Porro, School of Modern Dance, 196264Courtesy festivalarchitettura.it

. . .

Iwould like you to comment on your experiences in Cuba in the founding of the School of Architecture, the latest seminars that you did in CUJAE, and the meetings and new friendships in your country.

I tried to create an urbanism of communication with the students, and their work was superb. The kids here, for me, were a wonderful experience. At first they found difficult to adapt because they were not used to what I was doing. Today, we are trying to get people to focus again on quality. In the past I tried to create a really good school of architecture in Cuba but I could not, I was not allowed to.

But hey, theyre wonderful kids, with great sensitivity and spirit. Theyve won me over completely. Theyre adorable.

How have you reconciled the Western canon and the African canon? How do you live in the center of Paris, being so Cuban, and also have a special affinity for the best of African culture?

Let me explain: when I go back and forthand I think that's essential for a creative workerI integrate myself into the context there. When the artist is in Cuba, the artist is Cuban, and when hes in China, hes Chinese. When I'm in Cuba I am Cuban, and when I'm in France, I'm French. When I was building the Center for Art and Communication in Vaduz, Liechtenstein, I was Austrian. If I have to build in Africa I am an AfricanI did a project for Dabai and I did it in African. And when I have to go to other countries, I join the local context as wellI did that in Spain, Germany, and Iran. I am a very difficult architect to follow because I never do the same thing over again.

Ricardo Porro, Center for Art and Communication, Vaduz, 1971Courtesy festivalarchitettura.it

Does Cubaremain, in your mind, as the image of a tarantula?

I will now take an image of Paul Klees. He said that an artist is like a tree that has its roots in the earth, absorbs sap, passes it through its trunk, and produces branches and leaves. I like this image a lot. All artists live in a worldI lived in this world of the Revolution, and this produced the branches and leaves that is my artwork.

Now, what about me? The earliest memory I have is of my life is as a very small child in a grand colonial house in Camagey, my hometown, where my family lived. There was a room that had big Baroque cabinets, and I in my short pants would play on the floor with my toys. From behind the cabinet came a tarantula. It walked over my legs to the other side and went on its way. That was a strong image for me, one that produced artbecause in my art there is always a tarantula or spider that appears when I make a painting, or at the moment I do a drawing.

For example, I love to draw scorpions. In the School of Dance building, I left a tarantula in the theater; and theater, at its core, is a tarantula. Sure, if you want, its a thing of mine, a piece of my inner world that came there. I wsnt looking to convey something terrible to thestudentsIt was my own tarantula I was leaving with them, the tarantula of the child Porro.I remember someone saying to mepure comedy: "Why dont you go to Cuba?" There were years when I didnt come to Cuba, and I said: Because I would have to demand that the government of Cuba put me, with my short pants, in the same room I was playing in, with the same toys on the floor, and then, from behind the Baroque cabinet there, let the tarantula walk over me again, to close the cycle and end my problem with the tarantula ... And of course, the Cuban government cannot give me that. It's a joke. And then I came.

You first returned in 1996,after thirty years of not being in Cuba. What did you feel when you revisited the schools? How much nostalgia, and how much sorrow?

I cried like crazy. When I entered the buildings, I entered crying. It was a very strong emotion. It was like being reunited with a piece of my own flesh, my arm or my leg, my liverGod knows what part of my body. It was a very emotional encounter, belive me.And how doyou feel now this project is being restored?

Marvellous, really, really marvellous. And I've been working here with a terrific group, very smart people who want to do things right, to makecosas bien hechas. Theyre not idiots, and they've been working nonstop. I'm delighted.

If you were to define yourselfafter so many years, what words would you use?

I would define myself as a man of love. I am a man of love indeed, who loves deeply. I often feel that Im not loved, that there are people who do not love me, but that I love them anyway.

Are yousatisfied with your life, with your work?

Yes, because I think that life has to be composed in the same way that a work of art is composed. Otherwise, life is not worth living. You have to compose it as Leonardo and Botticelli made a picture. You have to compose it well, to make that life beautiful. Although it can be very tragic, and there can be very hard, very difficult times. But it has to be beautiful. . . And I think my life is not ugly. . .

Ricardo Porro, Paris, September 2014; photo by Atelier MoralesCourtesy Repeating Islands and Atelier MoralesJorge A. Fernndez TorresJorge A. Fernndez Torresgraduated in Art History from Havana University in 1992. He is the curator and director of the Wifredo Lam Center of Contemporary Art and director of the Havana Biennial, and a professor at the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA).

First Drafts: Architect Ricardo Porro on His Project for Fidel CastroExiled from Cuba in the midst of designing a school, he returned to complete the building 40 years laterIn 1961 Fidel Castro and Che Guevara commissioned three young architects to build Cuba's National Arts School on the grounds of a country club in Havana. In the minds of its creators, it was to be the most modern and innovative academy of its kind. But before its completion, the ideals of the revolution changed, halting the project and sending the architects into exile. Forty years later, Castro invited them back to oversee the completion of the school they left behinda story chronicled in Alysa Nahmias and Ben Murrays forthcoming documentary,Unfinished Spaces. Here one of the architects, Ricardo Porro, shares an early sketch for the academys School of Modern Dance, his vision for the building, and the story of what went wrong.

IN A REVOLUTION EVERYTHING GOES FAST. Castro gave me two months [to design] before we began construction. It was almost impossible, but I accepted. The school was to be built on the old country club of Havana, in the most expensive quarter of the city. The construction began and the students began also, taking classes and working in the houses. It was crazy. But you know, thats a revolution.When I make a building, I ask myself, what poetical image best expresses the buildings function? There is a definition of art I like by Hlderlin, the German poet: the sensible expression of an idea. And thats what I try to put in my buildings. An artist is like a thermometer you put in the air to measure the temperature. Our century has been the century of revolutionsit is even nowbut when I received this commission, I thought there had not been a good expression of revolution in architecture. I am not an abstract artist. I am a figurative artist. I wanted to create in that school the expression of revolution. What I felt at that moment was an emotional explosion.At one end of the piazza there is a theater. You could go upstairs, and from the top you could see the whole image: It looked as if youd taken a glass and smashed it with your fist. It represented the way we were breaking a whole world. Not exactly Batista. I tried to go higher. At the center of the piazza, there are pillars with angles in all directions, expressing an anguish and a danger, something in the air I didnt understand but tried to evoke. I had the inspiration in the paintings of Greco. In the faces of his bishops there are small angles going in all directions, to give you a sense of anguish. And that I tried to do in the Modern Dance school. A good artist takes nine parts from his influences and adds one of his own, and makes a masterpiece.At first my work was very well accepted. Then, suddenly, something changed. In Kafka there is a moment in which the man who is accused begins to understand that something is happening around him, and suddenly he feels that they are talking bad of him. He knows they are judging him, but he doesnt know who or where, and at the end he is condemned, and he doesnt know of what or why. That is the sensation I felt when I was forbidden in Cuba. Much later I went back to oversee the renovations, which are good and bad. Things have been added which are awful, purely ornamental. It's been best for the exteriors, and the School of Plastic Arts was better done.I can tell you a sentence from one of your poets, which I like very much: The greatest poet is not he who has done the best; it is he who suggests the most; he, not all of whose meaning is at fist obvious, who leaves you much to desire, to explain, to study, much to complete in your turn. When I was finishing my art school, there was a workman on the grounds, and I asked him, listen, when you see the space of this piazza, what does it resemble? And he says, I do not tell you what the fountain is because its a dirty word. But the whole thing, its the armpits of a crocodile. Id never thought of it. But if a building can make a person see such poetry, this is magnificent.

One had of course to be a nationalist, while trying to be a vanguardist at the same time. . . . It was something of a tall order, since all nationalism is founded on the cult of tradition, whereas vanguardism, by definition, implies a severance from traditionAlejo CarpentierTHE NORMALIZATION OF US-CUBA DIPLOMATIC RELATIONSwill undoubtedly lead to more architectural tourism, ending the ignorance of Cuban architectural culture that exists in the US and revealing key episodes in the Caribbean nations history to foreign architects and scholars for the first time. In the late 1950s, a debate prevailed among the very talented group of young Cuban architects around the question: Should Architecture express the cultural values of the nation or should Architecture express the universal values of an international civilization?Mario Romaach,Max Borges Recio, andFrank Martnezstand out among the larger of the two groups, which was committed to the rationalist or universal thesis. The nationalist side was taken byRicardo Porro, with his ideas ofCubanidadand the need to assume a new national identity based on the prevalent Afro-Cuban culture, in opposition to the dominant Spanish colonial urban legacy. Porros essay El Sentido de la Tradicin argued for an architecture rooted in indigenous Cuban culture and historyuna arquitectura negraa position influenced by the architecture of his masterEugenio Batistaand also the paintings ofWifredo Lam, a Chinese-Cuban artist whom Porro had befriended in Paris in 1950 while studying at the Sorbonne in the Institute dUrbanisme (the pioneer of Venezuelan modern architecture,Carlos Ral Villanueva, had studied there, in 1937). In Paris, Porro became a Marxist, and this epiphany furthered his ambition to express in architecture a poetic synthesis ofLo TropicalandCubanidad. He wished his architecture to be tectonic syncretism. While teaching in Caracas at the new Facultad de Arquitectura designed by Villanueva in 1957, he met two Italian architects,Vittorio GarattiandRoberto Gottardi, who had studied in Milan with Ernesto Rogers and were influenced by the rural vernacular architecture built throughout Italy thatGi Pontipublished in the magazineDomusduring the war-torn 40s.Porro began his career during the booming economy of the 40s and 50s in Havana. He belonged to the second generation of modern architects there who had the opportunity to build as soon as they graduated, along with such peers as Clara Porset,Mario Romaach,Frank Martnez,Nicols Quintana,Manuel Gutierrez,Rafael Portuondo,Gabriela Menndez,Aquiles Capablanca, Max andEnrique Borges Recio,Jose Novoa,Pablo N. Perez,Mario Gonzlez, andHugo DAcosta-Calheiros. At the same time, many foreign architects were practicing in Havana. Perhaps the most notorious building that emerged from a foreign practice during this era was the concrete-and-glass American Embassy, 195053, designed byWallace HarrisonandMax Abramovitz, architects of the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. In 1953, this embassy was exhibited in Architecture for the State Department at the Museum of Modern Art. It was one of the first of a string of commissions given by the State Department to the best American architects.Against this kind of official architecture, in his early houses Porro used curvilinear walls referencing the Mambo Modernism [1] prevalent in Cuba during the 50s by way ofMorris LapidusorOscar Niemeyer. This popular circular motif became the norm in the late 50s.Frank Martnezs brilliant project for the National Aquarium in Sibarimar, 1959, and his circular supermarkets built on the outskirts of Havana are the best examples of this moment in the city.Although he left in 1958 to teach in Caracas, Porro returned to Cuba in January 1959, when he was assured of the success of the revolution. His dream job, to help build architecture in the spirit of the new, socialist Cuba, began in 1961, when Fidel Castro put him in charge of the design of a new campus for the national art schools, to be built on the grounds of the Havana Country Club in the western suburb of Cubanacn. The five schools were conceived during this romantic phase of Castros long regime, when the impossible and the fantastic seemed to become real possibilities for his political disciples, goals to be pursued for the inspiration of the very poor. Porro immediately recruited his Caracas colleagues, the Venice-born Gottardi and Milan-born Garatti. The three architects undertook the design and construction of five separate buildings for the art facultiesnote that a school for architecture is missing from the program. Porros two schools, the fine arts school and the school for modern dance, advanced the idea that vernacular construction, using traditional reinforced concrete, brick, arches, vaults, and domes, would create anarquitectura negra(Black Architecture) capable of expressing a poesy of light and space yet built by the common laborer without the use of imported technology.Soon after the Seventh Congress of the International Association of Architects, held in Cuba in 1963, an emphasis on building low-cost housing using Soviet-style standardization threatened the poetic ideology of Porros Black Architecture that was so beautifully represented by the art schools. Architectural historian and criticRoberto Segreaccused Porro of being an elitist, whose work exhibited a narcissistic and egocentric bourgeois formation. [2] The admittedly arrogant Porro had several enemies, and Antonio Quintana, in charge of architectural design for the new Ministry of Construction, saw his organic expressive forms as decadent. Quintana managed to convince Castro to abandon the project in 1965. Of the five schools, only two are still active; the others are overgrown by the abundant urban tropical plants natural to the fertile soil of the former golf course. In 1966, Porro and his family moved to Paris, where Andr Malraux helped him find shelter and work. Most of Porros French projects were built in banlieues of Paris and did not fulfill the promise exhibited by his radical schools of the arts in Havana. He taught architectural history and theory in Paris, Lille, and Strasbourg, and he never returned to live on his native soil. Ricardo Porro, School of Plastic Arts at the National Art Schools, Havana, 1965.Photo:Revolution of Forms: Cuba's Forgotten Art Schools, by John A. Loomis, Princeton Architectural Press, 1999. Ricardo Porro, School of Plastic Arts at the National Art Schools, Havana, 1965.Photo: Flickr user travfotos. Vittorio Garatti, School of Music at the National Art Schools, Havana, 1965.Photo:Revolution of Forms: Cuba's Forgotten Art Schools, by John A. Loomis, Princeton Architectural Press, 1999. NOTES1. Eduardo Luis Rodriguez,The Havana Guide, Princeton Architectural Press, 2000, xxv.2. John A. Loomis, Obituary:Ricardo Porro, 1925-2014,Architectural Record, December 29, 2014.archrecord.construction.com/news/2014/12/141229-Obituary-Ricardo-Porro-1925-2014.aspCarlos Brillembourgis a principal ofCarlos BrillembourgArchitects, based in New York City, an editor-at-large for architecture at BOMB Magazine since 1992, and teaches in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University.

Should Architect Vittorio Garatti Finish His Own Design?British architect Norman Foster may finish the job first begun by architect Vittorio Garatti after the Cuban revolution.ByLINDSEY M. ROBERTSCopyright 2011 Unfinished Spaces LLCStill of Vittorio Garatti's 1961 School of Ballet from the film Unfinished Spaces by Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray.Three main players are involved with a controversy brewing over Cubas Schools of Art. Or rather, the controversy is that one of the main players isnt involved at all.In June, Cuban ballet star Carlos Acosta approached British architect Norman Foster,Hon. FAIA,to finish the School of Ballet at the Schools of Art, outside of Havana. Acosta lives in England, where he has been with the Royal Ballet since 1998, and now he wants to start a private ballet school in his home country. The problem is that the original architect, Vittorio Garatti, is still alive. So some are asking: Why is a British architect finishing a Cuban project for a Cuban artist, when the original architect, who lived in Cuba for a time,is still alive?Garatti designed the school in 1961 at the behest of Fidel Castro, who, after a round of play, decided to convert a golf course into a national place of study for thearts. Castro hired three architectsRichard Porro, from Cuba,and Garatti and Roberto Gottardi, from Italy,to design schools for arts such as dance, theater, ballet,and music. But Castro soon became influenced by the Soviet Union and its harsh, prefabricated, concrete architecture and stopped the project with only two of five schools complete.In the early 2000s, with Castros support, the project was briefly restarted after the buildings became some of the first modern examples to make theWorld Monuments Funds watch list in 2000 and 2002and some of the first to be nominated while the architects were still alivebut then it was abandoned again. The buildings are an example of a rare form of Modernism, andthey also revived the Catalonian vault. They are almost contemporary in their priority on the local materials brick and terra-cotta, and their adherence toclimate-specific design. Since 1961, the buildings have functioned as schools, despite their decay, turning out almost every post-60s Cuban artist, architect, dancer, and musician.The story of the buildings starts and stops is documented in the 2011 filmUnfinished Spacesby directors Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray, who articulate the schools as an apt metaphor for the different phases of the Cuban Revolution, a metaphor that continues to play out today. If the buildings are changing now, then are they going to be public or private? Nahmias asks. Will they be susceptible to international influences? The island itself is facing these tough decisions about the future.Granted, a client isnt required to hire the original architect when doing renovations or reconstructions of a project, Nahmias says. But when an original architect is alive, how do you deal with that? When something is declared a national patrimony and the architect is alive? she asks. A lot of investors are looking at Cuba and wanting to make of it what they like, and the Cuban officials and the Cuban people are at a crossroads.Nahmias says that Garatti has been working with Cuban officials for the past 10 years, flying back and forth between Cuba and Italy, to get the restoration and completion ready for when more funding arrived.Fosters office has not immediately responded to a request for comment, but whenBuilding Designbroke the storyin June that Foster + Partners would redevelop the original building into the new arts complex, Foster said, Carlos is a great dancer who is inspiring the regeneration of an iconic ruin of early modernism outside Havana.Garatti sent a letter from his home in Milan to Fidel and Raul Castro,NPR reported, saying that he was concerned that Acosta's plan could lead toward privatization of the school. Other architects have come to Garattis defense, but Acosta has said that he can take his plans for a ballet school to another country, if necessary.