Agrandir

Agrandir

Wooden house that was all the rage during the 19th century until the 1930s.

Agrandir

When you look up in a dictionary the meaning of the word vernacular, you find this adjective is synonymous of domestic, native, belonging to a country or a home. When it comes to architecture, the term acquires a far broader significance because it has to do with constructions that use materials easy to find in the region or area of execution, usually accompanied by a longstanding experience in the creation, renovation and maintenance of that building process. At the same time, that kind of building process relies on good workforce expertise passed on from one generation to the next. In other words, it is architecture without architects. Last but not least, in the case of the Caribbean, the commonest feature is the process's ability to cover long distances either on ground or by sea.

Vernacular architecture in the Caribbean Sea contains all of the above-mentioned characteristics, very much in sync with a multitude of formal expressions hailing from the colonizing metropolis and the origin of its inhabitants, inserted in a new and peculiar insular ecosystem. Vernacular architecture is closely linked to the human factor, the beings that dwell that house with their relatives, in such a way that it winds up being a part of them, shaping their idiosyncrasy and the way of being of the whole town and, somehow, their own national identity.

All cultural influences from the 16th century onward came to the Caribbean from the Iberian Peninsula, from other big European powers and from other peoples in far-off continents. That assortment, in which indigenous civilization left very few or virtually no traces at all, is by far its main richness right now, a diversity laid bare in the number of languages spoken, the cuisine, the music, the way of living and, of course, the way of building.

The Caribbean is one and many at the same time; there are large, midsize and small islands; continental territories that should come together with the help of information technology because geographical distances are indeed short. However, the communication gap is huge.

The Caribbean is a melting pot of cultures, religions, conquest and emancipation. But above all, it's a space of coexistence and half-breeds that, regardless of the geographical variety, holds on tight to signs of a shared identity. Through centuries of history and eventful contacts, the sea has always been looked leery at as a cause of perilous incursions and never as a productive source. Our production has mostly been based on crops and stock breeding, based on a plantation culture marked by the slavery of African Negroes.

More recently, the sea has turned out to be a magnificent economic resource, not so much in terms of fishing, but as the region's premier allure for foreign tourists and a tremendously potential means when it's properly managed. And there's abundant day-by-day evidence that a globalized world tries to pry out the singular aspects of every culture, a situation that underscores the importance of knowing and preserving vernacular architecture as an everlasting token of identity. Vernacular architecture, either popular or traditional, is one of the heftiest and most complete samples of the cultural richness that abounds in the Caribbean Basin, let alone an efficient tool to spread cultural tourism.

When Spaniards came to Cuba in 1492, they found aboriginal thatch-roofed huts. And even though that off-the-wall scenery struck sailors, the first emerging constructions that were erected in the New World -an unknown territory for Europeans- were made very similar to those aboriginal shacks.

In this peculiar clash of cultures, there's a subtle European ambivalence that must be highlighted. The Spaniards arrived in here as standard bearers of a Western-Latin culture that had just prevailed and evicted another civilization, the Oriental-Arabic, out of the Peninsula. Both cultures had wide apart differences in almost every sense. The winning Western-Latin culture kept people on their feet, while the Oriental-Arabic one preferred persons who got a load off their feet. The former needed furniture and the latter needed nothing but the floor. The adoption of the aboriginal huts and their rustic pieces of furniture gave birth to the post-Hispanic shack, the very first half-bred building of the Americas. In Cuba, the hut has up to now marked regions of rural populations scattered in farms, barns, estates, stables and tobacco plantations.

The Cuban hut has prevailed, yet it shows a clear-cut quantitative decline as a result of the drive of development. We may say this is quite an endangered architectural species. Another architectural expression poised to vanish anytime soon is the urban wooden house that was all the rage during the 19th century until the 1930s.

In many a nation of the Caribbean Basin, the wooden house is built with structures, walls and beams made of the same material: wood. Roofs may vary, depending on the region, but it's mostly made of wood as well. However, earthenware tiles of different styles -Cuban, French, flat or curved metal, plus the so-called roof paper of asphalt origin- finally set in. Technological breakthroughs keep churning out new substitutes with each passing day, some of them very aggressive for traditional architecture and generally brittle, that could lose their values in the face of the tiniest change.

All in all, the isolated house found in settlements near sugarcane mills is still a commonplace scene in Cuba. The bateyes (houses arrayed close to sugarcane mills) are indeed urban clusters of high heritage values. In nearly all cases, their designs are inspired by the assemble-ready, stucco-and-mortar American house also known as balloon frame. This typology evolved locally and spread out to summer vacation homes, like the ones found in Smith Key, off the Santiago de Cuba Bay, or in Punta Gorda in Cienfuegos, or the ones seen in Varadero Beach, in the province of Matanzas.

You can rest assured that vernacular architecture does not belong to a particular time, yet the two variants presented herein -the Cuban hut and the isolated or clustered wooden house- are topics that keep raising eyebrows and huge concerns all across the Caribbean Basin.

Given the importance of this topic, the Gonzalo de Cardenas Classroom of Vernacular Architecture came into being in Havana back in 2003, in an accord with the Office of the City's Historian and the Spain-based Diego de Sagredo Foundation. This institution pursues cultural and scientific objectives of general interest and has a say in the promotion, spread, research and safeguard of architectural culture everywhere under the sun. At the same time, the foundation plans and supports congresses, meetings and sessions on the topic. It also collaborates with colleges and universities, and more specially with the University of Madrid, where it is based. Needless to say there're strong ties and a community of interests between the Office of the Havana City's Historian and the Foundation, with the Gonzalo de Cardenas Classroom of Vernacular Architecture playing a meddling role. The Classroom also has close linkages with the Jose Antonio Echevarria Higher Technical Institute (ISPJAE) and with its headquarters at the National Architectural Heritage Division of the Office of the Havana City's Historian.