Architecture of Hotel Guantanamo
The Hotel Guantanamo is a faithful exponent of the mediocre and massive architecture that arose in the decade of the 70´s, characterized by the use of prefabricated elements of scarce design quality, rigid project norms, and, also, strange; these kind of structures are known as: “Russian Buildings”.
This architecture is consequence of a group of factors that hindered and ballasted the good execution and the project quality begun in the decade of the 60´s.
- Constructive marathons to inaugurate the works in preset dates, without consulting the execution chronograms.
- The tasks organizational and productive engineers, manufacturers and distant architects of the practical project.
- These buildings were conceived far from the aesthetic principles of architecture, privileging the technical and economic aspects.
- The project autonomy of the architects was given in by strict norms settled down by the Ministry of Construction.
- The constructive components were standarized, the symbols of the social and scientific progress as well.
- Rigid planning and composition typology were defined for each of the developed topics, associated to the employment of constructive prefabricated elements. Each topic possessed its functional and technological own configuration: the industries, the schools, the housings, the hospitals, the hotels, etc.
- There was a poor presence of plastic arts from the beginning of the project, motivated by the lack of a juridical-financial mechanism that sustained it, and for the theoretical faulty aesthetic education of most of the architects.
During the last years of the reconstruction processes of these structures the work has been developed in the architecture of interiors, with a strong presence of national plastic arts which provide an anthological character.
"I paint my city, its varied architecture motivates me; I paint because some people don't understand that beauty is vanishing. I am concerned about this fact, that is why I try to capture it in my painting... I love Cuban architecture but the fact that we are building cement houses with the ceiling above the head overwhelms me."
