Eugenio Falla Bonet Analysis

By the 1940s the modern architectural movement had shed all traditional reminiscences of the Mud?jar, Romanesque, gothic, and baroque influences Cuba had experienced, and another housing boom resulted from capital investment accumulated after World War II. Because of the technological advancement of reinforced concrete, apartment buildings started springing up in the late 1940s and through the next decade for the middle classes.

Modernism came into its glory and peaked in the 1950s. Thousands of Cuban homes were designed in the contemporary fashion in the suburbs of towns and cities throughout the island. Houses in Havana's Miramar and Cubanacán districts illustrate the last phase of Cuban modernism before the Communist Revolution. In the Miramar district Casa de Eutimio Falla Bonet was designed by architect Eugenio Batista and broke radically with the traditional grandeur and opulence of Havana's elite. Constructed in 1939, the single-story modernity employs concepts that Batista developed to achieve a style influenced by traditional Cuban colonial architecture but defined by the latest
Exceptional preservation work has kept these villas in the magnificent state in which they were first envisioned. The photographs, shot exclusively for this book, show examples in each area of the island-from the interiors and exteriors in Havana, Santiago de Cuba, Santa Clara, Cienfuegos, and Pinar del Rio to close-up details of courtyards, balconies, galleries, balustrades, grilles, and louvered doors in Trinidad, Matanzas, and Holguin. One featured home is Finca Vigia (“lookout house”), the former residence of Ernest