Output details

Out with the new, in with the old. Architecture and nation.

The research for this article focused on the analysis of Havana’s architectural peculiarities and their visual representations in film, photography and other visual forms, looking at their role in the formation of specific national narratives.

The research tried to determine what particular examples of Havana’s architectures and other urban landscapes are regularly shown and where. This study also focuses on the more important question of their historicity: how documents analysed came to represent visually Havana’s diversity during specific historical periods and how they fitted with the more generic discourses on the city during those same periods. Each case is analysed in relation to their political and cultural contexts, taking into account shifts in meanings brought about by political and social changes.

The analysis of Havana’s urban particularities and their visual representations is put within the context of what was happening at the time in the whole of the American continent, including the United States, regarding the demolition of old cities and their replacement with buildings designed under the premise of the modern style in architecture. The article, therefore, contributes to debates around the significance of old cities in the western world as national markers. It also adds to the contemporary re-readings of the concept of ‘the baroque’ in the Latin American context.

This study was previously presented as a research paper at two different conferences: The 8th International Conference of the Utopian Studies Society, held at The University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK on the 3rd of July 2007 and The Cuban Research Forum Conference, held at the Universidad de La Habana, Havana, Cuba, on the 12th July 2007. The paper’s title was: ‘Utopian Anachronisms and the Contemporary Nostalgia for the Lost City’.