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 Page 2 Much current work is being funded by income from the burgeoning tourism industry, which became increasingly important when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and its support of the Cuban economy vanished. "In terms of beaches, sun, and fun, there is a huge amount of competition all over the Caribbean," the Cuban-American town planner Andres Duany points out. "Except Cuba has these incomparable assets in Havana, Trinidad--its cities. They've discovered their trump card: in Cuba you can do culture and sun."
Using this approach, plazas and thoroughfares in Old Havana have been returned to pedestrian use and old buildings rehabilitated and given new functions. If you arrive in the city by ship, for example, the first thing you see when you step from the efficient cruise terminal--the retrofitted early-twentieth-century customshouse--is a pedestrian square, Plaza de San Francisco. At one edge is the 1738 church that gives the plaza its name; it has been restored for use as a concert hall and museum. Opposite is the Lonja de Comercio, an imposing Renaissance Revival office block with a covered atrium, built in 1903, that was renovated in a joint venture with a Spanish investor. Before, it housed what Rigol calls "unattractive administrative functions." Now it accommodates the offices of several airlines and other foreign companies; its inviting atrium is often used for art exhibitions. Lining another side of the plaza are the travel agency run by the city historian's office and several cafés whose tables spill into the square. (There's also a Benetton and a few horse-drawn carriages--elements that do ring the historic-mall-and-theme-park alarm. But beyond this plaza, one finds very little more of the sort.) From the plaza a pedestrian street leads into the heart of Old Havana. By a corner of the Lonja de Comercio, there is a typically Cuban moment of ironic humor: a twice-life-size naked copper Mercury, once the finial atop the building. Damaged in a hurricane, it was patched back together last year but installed face down on the cobblestones, marked off by iron bollards. Its message? "We're down, but not out," perhaps. Or, "See our gorgeous body, scarred but still strong." Deeper into the neighborhood there are half a dozen recently opened boutique hotels occupying historic houses. The 25-room Hotel Florida occupies an exceptionally grand and opulent mansion from 1836; its covered atrium provides a cool, hushed sanctuary from the district's thronged main commercial street. Other historic buildings in Old Havana have been turned into restaurants, museums, galleries, and shops. At the same time this remains a densely populated district. Some of the restored buildings are schools and clinics. The streets are crowded with foreign tourists and Cuban tourists--and folks who have been living upstairs or around the block for decades. "When we make decisions about specific structures, we look first at the heritage value," says Rafael Rojas, director of the Old Havana Master Plan. "Second, we look equally at two things: a building's economic potential--how can we use it in tourism?--and our social necessities--like hospitals, schools, and shops. With sixteenth- to eighteenth-century buildings, if they exist, the idea is to consolidate and conserve. If not, we consider new appropriate infill, using similar materials to the surrounding houses." Rojas's office oversees an ongoing project in the section of Old Havana probably least interesting to visitors: San Isidro. Always rough and poor, it has some of the city's oldest, humblest buildings--and a severe lack of amenities. Now earnings from tourism in the showier parts of town are underwriting a community-oriented rehabilitation here. Utilities are being improved and residents are given loans, technical assistance, and skills training so they can repair their own homes--not to mention temporary housing in the neighborhood while their own places are being rebuilt. First priority has gone to the 45 percent of buildings deemed least deteriorated to quickly create a sense of possibility, improvement, and momentum. "One of our main problems has been the distortions that result from scarcity--like makeshift additions that destroy original facades," says architect and planner Mario Coyula. "People give priority to the inside of their houses now. Before the revolution people tried to present their best to the street. It may have been hypocritical, but it made for the beauty of the city. The project in San Isidro is beginning to restore that urban culture." In 1994 a colloquium sponsored by the MAK--Austrian Museum for Applied Arts--brought some forward-thinking architects from Vienna, Barcelona, New York, and Los Angeles to meet with counterparts in Havana and turn their imaginations loose on the city. One example of the resulting reveries was California architect Eric Owen Moss's idea for Plaza Vieja, one of few sizable open spaces in Old Havana. Laid out in the sixteenth century, the plaza had been a marketplace and later a park, but its usability was ruined in about 1950 by construction of a subterranean parking garage; the roof stood five feet above the surrounding pavements. Moss's idea was to "attack" the plaza, transforming it into a huge amphitheater; the plaza's void would be the theater's bowl. He would "slice" away at the existing buildings, leaving sections of original facade but mostly replacing them with bleachers, and "rupture" the peripheral street grid, creating instead a zigzagging pedestrian path around the perimeter that linked the courtyards and light wells of the original structures. "The project intends to be historically naive," Moss wrote. "It's not afraid to bulldoze." |
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