‘The Havana Project’ Imagines a Rebirth That May Never Be

As every child knows, forbidden fruit tastes sweeter, and no place is so alluring as the one you cannot visit. For reasons of political expediency, Cuba is generally off-limits for Americans, so “The Havana Project,” an exhibition of architectural projects at the MAK Center/Schindler House in West Hollywood, carries the thrill of the illicit.

The show’s catalog is more interesting (and intelligible) than the exhibits, however, for it explains how this exotic project began and what it aimed to achieve. Peter Noever, director of MAK (the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna), convened a meeting of iconoclastic architects in Havana during the first six days of 1995. Attending were Eric Owen Moss and Thom Mayne from Los Angeles; Wolf Prix, who divides his time between Vienna and L.A.; Lebbeus Woods from New York; Carme Pinos from Barcelona; Noever and partner Carl Pruscha from Vienna. They met to discuss the future of architecture, to absorb the spirit of Havana and to design a site-specific project.

The discussions transcribed in the catalog are full of sharp observations on all these topics. The participants are entranced by the contradictions between a vibrant social life and a decaying city, in which four-fifths of the buildings are in an advanced state of deterioration. Their mix of humility and arrogance evokes a group of doctors debating how to treat a gravely sick patient: recommending radical surgery, further study or benign neglect, according to temperament. Prix confesses he has no answers, except to improve the plumbing; for him, the city is doomed to destruction by redevelopment. Mayne is less explicit but equally uneasy about the challenge of building anything. Their models are essentially abstractions.

Pinos opines that “Havana is destroyed. It is only a promenade, nothing more,” but she offers a model for a waterfront development of sensuously curved canopies and enclosures “developed from lines drawn in air by the bodies of Cubans.” Noever and Pruscha, who have previously designed real-life projects in Havana, are more aggressive, proposing a symbolic gateway to the city (Puerta del Pueblo) that’s as steely and sharp-angled as a Russian Constructivist monument of circa 1925. Obviously they didn’t read Fidel Castro’s foreword to the catalog, in which he declares (and who would know better) that Cuba doesn’t need any more monuments.

Just as you wonder if this exhibition is fated to be an exercise in artistic self-indulgence, you find the two models that justify the project. Woods, who is best known for his fantastic drawings of insect-like structures and the ruins of Sarajevo, proposed a hinged terrace that might be built of concrete sections along four miles of the Havana waterfront. It would function as a promenade in fine weather and then, as hurricane-tossed waves approached, tilt up to create a sea wall. Only an engineer could determine the feasibility of this concrete barrage, but the idea combines poetry and utility.

Moss has won fame for his bold new structures and radical transformation of decrepit industrial buildings in Culver City. The same intense energy is applied here, as he attacks (his word) the Plaza Vieja--a square in the historic core of Havana that was wrecked five decades ago when the park was torn up to create a half-sunken parking garage. Unimpressed by its status as part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Moss tears into what he calls “the bloodless colonial architecture,” building bleachers over and around the fragmented facades to create an open-air theater. The garage becomes a disco and a stage. New streets flow through the existing grid, linking the light wells concealed behind the facades. Looking at the white plaster model, you imagine a butterfly struggling out of a chrysalis: an apt metaphor for this brutal intervention that provides an arresting dialogue between old and new.

It’s unlikely that any of these projects will be realized. Preservationists may sigh with relief, but the reality is more depressing. Constrained by American sanctions and a dictatorship, Havana will probably continue to crumble and be diluted by generic buildings for the tourist trade. Noever’s project--however implausible--is a stimulus to fresh thinking. And it makes inventive use of the Schindler house. It’s exciting to see this landmark of modern architecture restored to its original role as a locus for original ideas and provocative events.

* “The Havana Project: Architecture Again,” through July 26 at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, 835 N. Kings Road, West Hollywood; (213) 651-1510.