... Cuban architecture has always kept a very particular signature tone, holding great authenticity and legitimacy.

Architecture has taken into account diverse factors along its long journey through times. Climate agents and available resources have been noteworthy in its development process. In this way, from an overview to our Baroque, we can quickly notice it's pretty different from the European's, varying also from the Mexican's. Cuban Baroque is, according to Havana Cathedral model, arranged in a classical traditional ground floor and a non-excessively-decorated facade combining lights and shadows.

I think the Cuban colonial architecture was acquiring peculiar features according to the different zones of the country.

The great architecture of Havana was made to share housing and warehouse spaces. Trinidad's architecture is aimed at amazing due to a fast-growing wealth, playing with spaces to simulate greatness, flooding ostentation in front of real needs. As far as Camagüey`s architecture is concerned, it is more patriarchal and so is the Santiago`s in more intime dimensions.

Some cities are also building their architecture according to the epoch in which they were created and developed. In our country we had, for example, an eclectic presence as a mix and at the same time, a process of suitableness to realities.

Around the XX century`s 40s and 50s, appeared in Cuban architecture works reflecting a search for harmony between the assimilation of traditional values and contemporary language, I think the best examples we have had afterwards, do keep this style. However, parallel to all these intrinsic values for architecture, our identity has found a proper place in the urban scheme of our cities.

The enchant of our cities does not only relies on the fact of possessing specific monumental buildings with varied characteristics, according to the epoch in which they were created, it also has to do with the form in which that urban scheme has been designed and how it has been a reflect of the cities` historical process.

We have been lucky, because with the presence of the Revolution, all this history have been preserved , along all these last forty years, an urban strong financial speculation has emerged in other countries together with an excessive grow of cities, as sort of urban macro-ensembles easy to find also in Latin America: Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Caracas...

This situation provoked, in many cases, the destruction of the historical past, the historical image of all those cities to allow the birth of a more homogeneous architecture losing in some cases, its human dimension.

In this way, our cities have the priviledge, in terms of identity, not only of showing a proper face, but also of being cities still exhibiting their history when somebody walks around them.

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Taken from Cuando la palabra entra en ese mundo otro, written by the outstanding Cuban intellectual Graciela Pogolotti. Published by La Letra del Escriba. 2003

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