Author Description

Over the course of the past 40 years Cuba's distinct political, ideological and cultural climate has produced a narrative of the built environment unique within the history of modern architecture. Fuelled by political optimism and the promise of social reform, the new Cuban government after 1959, led by Fidel Castro, launched an ambitious national building program as part of a national effort to reapportion wealth across a traditionally stratified society. These projects focused on the construction of social housing, educational facilities and public works that would translate the Revolutionary mission into the built environment, many of them built by a younger generation of architects whose experimentation with forms and materials extended the tradition of modernism beyond the pre-Revolutionary domain of private development and single-family houses. Written by Havana-based architect and historian Eduardo Luis Rodríguez, and the subject of a major exhibition at the Storefront for Art and Architecture, Architecture and Revolution introduces a body of work virtually unknown outside of Cuba, documenting the breadth and innovation of architectural projects built by the Cuban government between 1959 and 1969.