Book review
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.6.1.0095 |
| Pages | 95384-97 |
| Published date | 01 April 2014 |
| Date | 01 April 2014 |
| Author | Jenny Fortune |
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BOOK REVIEWS
Timothy Hyde, Constitutional Modernism: Architecture and Civil Society in
Cuba, 1933–1959
(Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2012) pb 384pp.
ISBN: 9780816678112
Reviewed by Jenny Fortune
In his meticulously researched and richly detailed resumé of Cuban architecture
and planning from the 1930s to 1959, Hyde fails to make the case for the
relationship between architecture and planning and democratic governance in
Cuba. He uses the apparently objective and value-free approach of an urban
planning professional to explore the influence of a generation of Cuban architects
seeking to establish a democratic framework for the development and planning
of Cuba’s cities. He traces in particular the development of an urban democratic
constitution between the years 1930 and 1959 and allies this to the design of
urban masterplans and monuments for Havana.
The fatal flaw in his thesis is his failure to critique the fact that an American
New York–based planning company, Town Planning Associates (TPA),
dominated all masterplans for Cuba during these years, and that the Cuban
planning body which worked with this company, the National Planning Board
established by the Batista dictatorship, was essentially a planning instrument in
the hands of a corrupt and money-laundering dictatorship. Hyde is aware that
the drive for a Cuban constitution derives from the influence of Martí and his
vision for a truly independent nation of Cuba, but disingenuously fails to see the
contradiction of allying this drive to a form of planning which derives from a
now discredited type of eurocentric and US-dominated architectural modernism.
He also draws an abrupt line in this development with the advent of the Cuban
revolution in 1959. He graciously includes a quote from one of his leading
protagonists of Constitutional Modernism, the architect Wiener who was head
of TPA and greeted the Cuban revolution with this comment: ‘You can imagine
our awkward position with respect to the Cuban revolution. Here we are good
liberals and democrats and probably identified as Batista men. Of course, I
lose no sleep over it’. Within a year of the revolution, every Cuban architect
cited in this book had left Cuba. Hyde makes clear that he considers the Cuban
revolution as a clear barrier to the continuity of constitutional democracy for
Cuba, although neither the constitution nor any of the planning projects, save
IJCS6_1 95 06/06/2014 11:35
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