The oldest of Cuba’s 60 universities, and the third-oldest in Latin America, the Universidad de la Habana (University of Havana) was founded in 1721 by Pope Innocent XIII and King Philip V of Spain, originally being housed in 1728 in the Dominican convent of Santo Domingo in the Old Town of Havana. No doubt looking […]
The windows are covered over with panels of tiles, with three cartoon-like characters floating through the glass, giving a hint of what is inside. Inside, ceramic tiles decorate one of the walls, while the shadows of ceramic tiles weave through the paintings elsewhere. Holland and Portugal: two countries with a tradition of producing and using decorated […]
What happens to art and to artists as time marches on? Artists create, they breathe their personality into their work, they take inspiration from other artists while they develop their own style… but then what….? At the end, does their work end up in skips and in black bins bags, thrown away by the artists themselves […]
Floating schools in Nigeria, homes for homeless children in India, houses for immigrants in Portugal, entire new towns in Germany, water tanks as public parks in Colombia and rebuilding schools after the 2014 earthquake in Thailand. Just a few of the many ideas on display at this year’s Biennale. There is almost too much to […]
The centre of Havana is busy with construction as it continues to regenerate and invest in quality hotels for the growing number of visitors to the city. The Government is refurbishing the Capital Building is following on from the noteworthy restoration of the Teatro Marti and the Gran Teatro de La Habana <Alicia Alonso> and there are new […]
Well done Florence for refusing to have a MacDonald’s burger bar in the heart of the Renaissance City. Bad form to MacDonald’s to taking Florence to court for this decision – it has ruined your reputation for ever and confirmed that you are a money making capitalist machine. Hopefully Donald trump will reflect on this. […]
An empty white room which pushes minimalism to its limit, black rooms with shimmering prisms that appear and disappear while pyramids are flooded in blue light, and rooms with a grotto-like landscape alongside a monumental Chinese gate surrounded in barbed wire. Three artists seek to engage viewers in different three-dimensional experiences. How minimalist can an […]
A ruined shell for 40 years behind its protected neo-classical façade, the Teatro Marti in the centre of Havana was faithfully restored and re-opened in 2014. Originally opened in 1884, it was a popular venue in which to premier Cuban “zarzuelas” (musical comedies that preceded caberets) and for “Teatro Bufo” (satirical plays that often mocked the Spanish government of the […]
It is 14 years since I last attended a performance at the Gran Teatro de La Havana; it was showing its age then and the lighting was rather dull. It has now been spectacularly transformed in a three year refurbishment that has opened up the foyer spaces with a new bar and space for art […]
Adjacent to the restaurant/bar El Cocinero, the other part of the project which transforms the former cooking oil factory in Vedado in Havana is La Fabrica del Arte Cubano, where a wide variety of arts, drinking and eating all combine together into a fantastically vibrant place, open from 8pm to 3am and where, at 11 […]
"The many great gardens of the world, of literature and poetry, of painting and music, of religion and architecture, all make the point as clear as possible: The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden. If you don't want paradise, you are not human; and if you are not human, you don't have a soul."
(Thomas Moore)
To be an architect means having a wide range of interests - architecture, art and creativity in all its variety of forms, sustainability, science and innovation. The greatest interest is often where these different worlds overlap and collide - that is when something imaginative often occurs that pushes us all forward to another place
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