Postwar & Welfare-Modernist (1945–1975)

Havana Plan Piloto

1955 · Cuba · Latin America · Functionalist modernism · Planned by Town Planning Associates (Sert, Wiener)
General directives master plan (Directivas Generales) of the Havana Plan Piloto by Town Planning Associates (Sert & Wiener), applying the Athens Charter functions through new zoning across the metropo
General directives master plan (Directivas Generales) of the Havana Plan Piloto by Town Planning Associates (Sert & Wiener), applying the Athens Charter functions through new zoning across the metropo · cc-by-sa

Core idea

Modernist capital plan

Why it matters

Latin modernism in the Caribbean

Description

A master plan for Havana prepared in 1955–58 by Town Planning Associates, the firm of Josep Lluís Sert and Paul Lester Wiener, for the Batista government's national planning board. Following CIAM principles, it proposed reorganising the metropolis with new expressways, functional zoning and neighbourhood units, a redeveloped civic and government centre, and a controversial remodelling of Habana Vieja that included thinning the colonial fabric and an artificial island of casinos and hotels off the Malecón. The revolution of 1959 ended the plan before implementation.

Significance

The plan is the culminating Latin American work of Sert and Wiener and a revealing document of late CIAM urbanism entangled with speculative and political interests in the pre-revolutionary Caribbean. Its proposed treatment of Old Havana has been widely criticised in retrospect, and its abandonment, followed by decades of limited redevelopment, is often credited with sparing the historic centre now recognised as a World Heritage Site.

What shaped it

Sources

Open it on the interactive timeline →
hub.toekom.st — History of Urbanism · an interactive timeline of 850 planned cities across 6,000 years.