Revolutionary Vision Abandoned

In architecture, the chaotic aftermath of revolution is often identified with the sudden liberation of the cultural imagination. But not so in Cuba, a country whose architectural legacy still only conjures images of quaint colonial neighborhoods and somewhat garish ‘50s-era hotels.

So the current show at the MAK Center in West Hollywood, “Architecture and Revolution: Escuelas Nacionales de Arte en la Habana,” is a delicious surprise. The show includes photos and plans of a complex of five art schools commissioned shortly after Fidel Castro came to power; Castro intended the buildings, which opened on the outskirts of Havana in 1965, to mark the birth of a new revolutionary society. It was a short-lived experiment. The builders of the new Cuba would soon turn their attention from the arts to much-needed housing programs, and two of the school buildings were never fully completed. Today, they stand mostly abandoned, much of the complex swallowed up by the neighboring jungle. But although these structures remain widely unknown outside Cuba, they rank among the best examples of a Modernist architecture closely bound to a people’s history, one rooted in indigenous building techniques and traditional forms.

The notion of a national art school occurred to Castro and his revolutionary compadre Che Guevara during a round of golf at the local country club. Art for the masses, they thought, could now replace leisure for the few. Five schools were commissioned from a team of three architects: the Italian Roberto Gottardi, who designed the school of dramatic arts; his compatriot Vittorio Garatti, who designed the schools of music and ballet; and the Cuban Ricardo Porro, who designed the schools of modern dance and plastic arts, as well as the project’s master plan.

The trio produced a cultural complex that mixes the revolutionary dream of a new society with lyrical, organic forms and a playful sense of freedom. And freedom here is equated with sexual awakening. Porro’s school of plastic arts, for example, is organized along three serpentine walkways enclosed underneath vaulted arcades. Large domed studios, set in pairs like gigantic, bulbous breasts, nuzzle up against the paths and enclose an interior plaza. A large oculus protrudes from the center of each dome, which, one supposes, would bathe the nude studio models below in a soft light.

This sexual imagery was intentional. Porro’s romantic vision of a new Cuban architecture rejected the prevalent Spanish Colonial style as too austere for the warmblooded Cubans. His models were African villages, not cathedrals, and he sought to fuse these primitive archetypes with a Modernist sensibility and Catalan building techniques. The photos here reveal how successful he was. The spaces meld wonderfully with the wildness of the landscape. Their low, terra cotta vaults give the studios a heroic simplicity.

All of the schools, in fact, rely on a similar system of vaults and domes, which gives the project a sense of unity despite the disparate architects who worked here. Garatti’s ballet school pushes the structural system the furthest. Paths lead across the undulating roofscape. Thin, overlapping vaults allow light to spill into subterranean walkways. The curved walls of the dance studios embrace the activity inside. Garatti’s design takes the sensuality of the Cuban landscape less literally, but its use of organic forms appears equally romantic--a romanticism that was eventually rejected by party apparatchiks.

The show’s accompanying catalog, written by John A. Loomis, explains some of this political background. But none of that context, unfortunately, is available in the show. The images presented here--some contemporary, some vintage--raise more questions than they answer. More than a third of the photos are of roofscapes--beautiful, hypnotic images of swirling, organic forms about to be gobbled up by the lush vegetation all around. But they give you little sense of their place in the larger context of Cuba or allow you to explore this peculiarly idiosyncratic vision with true depth. And the photographs say nothing about the complex’s short life as an artistic community. Was this an isolated creative act or part of a broader moment of cultural awakening? These questions are left to the viewer’s imagination.

* “Architecture and Revolution: Escuelas Nacionales de Arte en la Habana,” MAK Center for Art and Architecture, 835 N. Kings Road, West Hollywood, (323) 651-1510; through May 7.