This week Havana hosts the 12th World Congress on Art Deco, bringing together world specialists to preserve the city's rich art deco heritage, with lectures, tours and exhibitions in the Cuban capital. We take a tour of some of the city's finest buildings from the period
Claire Boobbyer
Tue 12 Mar 2013 11.46 EDT First published on Tue 12 Mar 2013 11.46 EDT
This week, for the first time, Cuba’s capital will host the World Congress on Art Deco, uniting global specialists as well as Unesco, the International Coalition of Art Deco Societies (ICADS), and Havana’s powerful City Historian’s Office, in an attempt to preserve and restore the city’s deco heritage. Cubans had lobbied the US-run ICADS for 10 years to host the biennial world congress – first held in Miami in 1991. Habana Deco, who are hosting the congress, will also run new art deco tours for visitors, taking in key buildings such as this (also see following photo), the Edificio Bacardí in Old Havana. • The World Congress on Art Deco runs from 14-21 March 2013Photograph: Claire Boobbyer Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
Across Havana, art deco buildings, sculptures, and architectural accents grace the city. They range from this signature masterpiece – the former headquarters of the Barcardí rum empire – and a bizarre, Mayan temple-themed theatre, through to chevrons and geometric flourishes imprinted on apartment balconies and shop facades. The Bacardí HQ, with its crowning ziggurat tower topped by a bronze bat motif, was built in 1930 by Esteban Rodríguez Castells and Rafael Fernández Ruenes. The 12-storey facade, anchored in red granite, is decorated in enameled terracotta panels of naked nymphs by the American artist Maxfield Parrish. The mezzanine Bacardí café, complete with light shades stamped with the company’s bat symbol, is due to reopen. • Edificio Bacardí, San Juan de Dios, corner of Monserrate, Old Havana
In 1928, Cuba’s president Gerardo Machado ordered the building of a suburb complete with art deco highlights, and named it after his mother, Lutgarda Morales. Sitting right next to Havana’s airport terminal 1, the tiny network of streets contains one of Havana’s most extraordinary buildings – the Teatro Lutgardita (see next photo). Besides Lutgardita’s theatre, architects Evelio Govantes, Félix Cabarrocas and Luis Echeverría, erected this cute art deco post office, and the Saint Lutgarda church, with its art deco towers. • Reparto Lutgardita, Rancho Boyeros
Cine-teatro Sierra Maestra (former Teatro Lutgardita):
The modest art deco exterior of the Cine-teatro Sierra Maestra (1932) gives no clue to the exotic Mayan fantasy within. Imitation sculptures from the ruined Mayan cities of Guatemala and Mexico flank the stage; the auditorium’s walls are eerily lit by the light-bulb eyes of crafted aluminium Mayan face masks that appear to monitor the audience; and sub-tropical jungle murals climb across the walls. The striking vestibule features unusual art deco lamps and murals. Visit every Sunday at 2pm for Parranda Campesina (traditional music, dancing, story telling and comedy) performances. • Reparto Lutgardita, Rancho Boyeros
This enormous, stepped apartment block was commissioned by publisher José López Serrano, who ran La Moderna Poesía, a Cuban publishing house. Built by Ricardo Mira and Miguel Rosich in 1932, the facade is furnished with zig-zagged arches and characteristic flower friezes, but the highlight is buried inside (see next photo). Other art deco Havana apartments include the 1939 narrow block, corner of Calle Galiano and Zanja, Centro Habana, and the 1934 Casa Suárez on Calle Aguila, corner of San Miguel, Centro. • Calle 13 corner of L, Vedado
The vestibule of the López Serrano building is paved with terrazzo designs, stylised ceiling lamp shades (with an accumulated 80 years of dust), and red Moroccan marble walls. The highlight is the nickel-silver relief El Tiempo (‘Time’) designed by Cuba’s most famous graphic artist, Enrique García Cabrera. The glorious art deco design (and the official logo of Congress) reflects the obsession with time and the increased mechanisation of the world during this 20th-century era. • Calle 13 corner of L, Vedado
Havana’s love affair with art deco blossomed at a time of commercial promise: Cuba had grown rich on the back of the sugar trade – especially during the first world war. Like its neighbour, Miami, across the Florida Straits, where art deco flourished in South Beach and Miami Beach, pastel colours and whimsical motifs were introduced, creating a 'tropical deco’ look. This private house was designed by architect Angel de Zárraga in 1933. • Calle 8 no. 510, between 5ta and 7ta, Miramar
This prominent building, designed by Cristóbal Díaz and Rafael de Cárdenas in 1941, sits on the busy, pollution-choked Avenida Reina that cuts right through the city centre, from Old Havana to the Plaza de la Revolución. The friezes were fashioned by Cándido Alvarez. Further east, along the same road, apartment buildings are adorned in the architectural lexicon of art deco. At the junction of Avenida Reina and Calle Belascaoín is the enormous Masonic Grand Lodge of Cuba. • Avenida Reina 158, between Calles Rayo and San Nicolás, Centro Habana
Boudoir and bathroom of Countess Revilla de Camargo, Museo de Artes Decorativas:
This pink marble bathroom, decorated with porcelain and glass, belonged to one of Cuba’s wealthiest families. Built in the 1920s as the family home of sugar baron José Gómez-Mena Vila, it was bequeathed to his widowed sister María Luisa Gómez-Mena Vila (Condesa de Revilla de Camargo). The opulent mansion, overflowing with some 33,000 antiques, commands half a city block in leafy Vedado. The tomb of María Luisa’s father, Andrés Gómez Mena, stands right at the entrance to Havana’s Christopher Columbus cemetery, and is banded by a frieze of flying angels. • Calle 17 no. 502 between D and E, Vedado
Enrique García Cabrera was a Cuban painter, professor and graphic artist; he designed many art deco style covers for Cuban magazines Bohemia and Carteles, and he crafted the bronze reliefs on the doors of Cuba’s former seat of government, El Capitolio. He designed the relief on the facade of his house (1938) himself, while the relief on the ground floor was created by his student, Manuel Rodulfo. The 50m long, narrow white house was built by Cuban architect Max Borges. • Calle 22 and Calle 23, Vedado
Dominating a corner of busy Vedado is this wedding-cake, white Methodist church. It was designed by architect Ricardo Franklin as late as 1950 and was awarded the Gold Medal from Cuba’s College of Architects in 1951. • Calle K no 502, corner of Calle 25, Vedado
The Rodríguez Vázquez apartment building, built by Fernando Martínez Campos and Pascual de Rojas in 1941, towers over the Teatro América. The América’s interior curves contrast with the unadorned mint and green facade of the apartment block. Inside, a double curved staircase rises around a circular terrazzo floor embedded with art deco signs of the zodiac. In the wings of the building are the beautifully preserved, stylised men and women’s cloakrooms. Will Young’s Evergreen was filmed here (spot the gorgeous, bulbous balcony seating). • Calle Galiano, corner of Neptuno, Centro Habana
: Shop facades, like this one, were often embellished with art deco motifs. The exterior of the former Almacenes Ultra is strikingly beautiful. The store was founded in 1938 by César Rodríguez Gonzáles, the first president of Spain’s well-known El Corte Inglés department store. Not far away is the 1937 facade of the former gift shop, La Casa Quintana (Calle Galiano between Calles San Rafael and San Miguel, Centro Habana). Bookshop, La Moderna Poesía, by the López Serrano building’s Ricardo Mira, greets visitors to the top of Old Havana’s main shopping street, Obispo. • Avenida Reina 109, between Calles Rayo and Angeles, Centro Habana
Married socialite Catalina Lasa fell in love with landowner and widower Juan Pedro Baró in 1905. Cuba had no divorce laws at the time, so the lovers escaped to Paris to continue their affair. On their return, in 1917, Baró built Catalina a neo-Italianate renaissance villa on Vedado’s grand avenue Paseo (Casa de la Amistad, between Calles 17 and 19) which features an art deco dining room (Primavera Restaurant); Baró also had a rose named after Catalina. After her death, in 1930, French glassmester René Lalique was commissioned to design her tomb (pictured). • Cementerio Colón, Calle Zapata and 12, Vedado
Juan Pedro Baró mausoleum doors, Catalina Lasa, Cementerio Colón:
René Lalique’s white domed mausoleum is patterned in engraved glass roses covering small, square windows – an immortal imprint of the eponymous Catalina Lasa rose, created by Juan Pedro Baró to honour his beautiful wife. Lalique’s huge black granite doors are crafted with angels and roses. • Calle Zapata and 12, Vedado
Other art deco features in Havana’s cemetery include the 1957 white marble pietà by Cuba’s most famous sculptor, Rita Longa (1912-2000), which adorns the black tomb of the prominent Aguilera family. Another of Rita Longa’s art deco sculptures can be seen close to the Malecón in Old Havana. The Fuente de los Mártires (Martyrs’ Fountain), a white marble statue group (1941-47), sits at Prado, corner of Calle Cárcel.• Calle Zapata and 12, Vedado
