In Havana, a noble residence becomes a cultural space where time remains visible

In the heart of Havana, Cuba, Infraestudio has delicately traced a new mark on the timeline of a 19th-century noble residence, long disused and in ruins, now converted into a contemporary art centre. In keeping with the natural transformative process of any organism shaped by the passage of time, the studio interprets and embraces the irregularities and imperfections of the building, putting a stop to the degenerative process caused by neglect: layers of faded and sometimes barely perceptible colour, patinas on the walls and uneven finishes, traces of damp and cracks are cleaned, repaired and preserved as elements with a strong expressive connotation.

While there are very few new features (the skylight, flooding the central rooms with natural light, and the new raw concrete staircase leading from the garden to the roof), the project focuses on a meticulous labor limae for the recovery of materials from the construction site, reused to fill in the lacunae according to an approach which highlights the contemporary intervention, subtly contrasting with the context: from the wood of the ceilings reused to repair other wooden finishes with different textures and colours, to the fallen pieces of the roof reused as stones in the garden, to the reddish finish (obtained by pulverising the bricks of the collapsed walls) covering the new walls and the cracks in the existing ones, leaving the perception of what is no longer there.

Meanwhile, during nine years of works, new traces and sedimentations have begun to appear on the walls, signifying a cultural approach that renounces freezing the natural passage of time but, on the contrary, welcomes its flow, transforming it into added value.