Central Campus of the University of Havana

Description

The University of Havana is the oldest higher education institution in the country, founded in January 1728. The Dominican fathers have the merit of promoting the approval of the first Cuban higher education center (third in the Caribbean region and sixteenth in Latin America), which name would be Real and Pontificia Universidad de San Gerónimo (Royal and Pontifical University of Saint Jeronimo) for 114 years. Like its peers in the rest of the hemisphere, the university would have both papal permission and royal authorization, due to its pontifical and royal nature. On September 12th, 1721, Pope Innocent XIII passed in Rome, the Sub annulo piscatoris, a brief by which Dominican priests in the Monastery of Saint John of Lateran were granted the authorization to found a university in the premises of the monastery. Once the said university was founded, it would receive the approval of the Spanish crown through the Royal Decree dated 23 September 1728.

Historiography generally assumes a consensual periodization for the study of the history of the University of Havana, which considers both the internal institutional logic and the impact of the dominant sociopolitical transformations. These periods would be:

1. Real y Pontificia Universidad de San Gerónimo de La (The Dominican University). From foundation to secularization (1728-1842).
2. Real and Literary University of Havana. (The secular and colonial University). From secularization to the end of the colonial period (1842-1898).
3. National University or University of Havana. From the US military occupation to the reform process following the fall of the regime of Gerardo Machado (1899-1940).
4. University of From the constitution of 1940 to the triumph of the Revolution (1940-1958).
5. From the triumph of the Revolution to the creation of the Ministry of Higher Education (1959- 1976)
6. From the creation of the Ministry of Higher Education (1976) to the

The central campus of the University of Havana was built in its current location in the early twentieth century, specifically in May 1902, when the old convent was abandoned in the historic center and relocated to the borders of the developing neighborhood of El Vedado, on the grounds and buildings of the former Military Pyrotechnics (military barracks from colonial times). The process of constructive consolidation of the architectural ensemble survived the ups and downs of more than forty years of building experience ranging from the refurbishment of the constructions made in the old Militar Pyrotechnics (1900) to the last new factories built in the jurisdiction of the Hill (La Colina) in 1940; a long period that witnessed the mandate of more than ten governmental presidencies in the country, twelve rectoral directorates and, in addition, the collaboration of more than fifteen architects who acted as main designers, and two construction firms.

Both the well-known Colina Universitaria and the new buildings that the university authorities projected in its surroundings, articulate a vast stylistic and morphological repertoire, of plural historical and cultural singularities and they exhibit the rubrics of outstanding creators. In the words of Concepción Otero, "It can be said that the complex of buildings of the University of La Habana is a faithful reflection of the representative problems of international cultural development throughout the period from its foundation to the present day. Its current image was concretized through the years with the constructions that today make up the university campus, taking care zealously that its compact structure did not obscure its colossal image or its consideration as an indisputable landmark of this part of the city".

Justification de la Valeur Universelle Exceptionnelle

The central campus of the University of Havana, founded in 1728, the third oldest in the Caribbean and among the first twenty in Latin America, exceptionally synthesizes in its material and intangible expression the rhythm and ups and downs of history, not only of the Cuban nation but of transnational scope. Its urban and architectural conception, as well as its wide repertoire of movable goods, are of a remarkable symbolic density and outstanding quality of design, particularly after its change of location in the early twentieth century (1902).

Criterion (ii): The University of Havana, in particular its current location in the Loma de Aróstegui, former Military Pyrotechnics, is an expression of transcendental moments of continental history and culture, in particular the transition from the end of the Spanish empire to the emergence and growth of United States influence in the region. It is exceptional evidence of the condition of epicenter that a university assumes in the most extreme sociopolitical circumstances and how its urban, architectural, and aesthetic morphology testifies to that decisive role.

«Reading» the image of the University, its design, and visual repertoire (both movable and immovable properties), allows the understanding of substantive processes of the regional history of the last century: the end of colonialism, accentuated by the rise of a new catalog of republican symbols in tune with independence and at the same time its legacy, expressed in the assimilation of expressions of his architecture, for example, the central courtyards that characterize and structure the interiors of many buildings. The US influence, from the imported construction materials that sustained the existence of the staircase and the Alma Mater, can be appreciated both in the strictly material aspect and in the many intangible legacies that survive today, among them the intensity of the university sports movement with its imposing University Stadium. And, although the signs of the 1959 Revolution must be traced basically in the immaterial dimension or movable properties, it must be emphasized that the University of Havana is one of the most widespread icons of the revolutionary insurrectionary struggle. Scene of violent and sustained confrontations between the young students and the repressive forces of the governments of the time, in particular the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, the reopening of the classrooms of the University of Havana in 1959 meant the return to an order of things altered by the preceding government. Likewise, the change in the selection criteria for the commissions of artistic works (now focused on the new university heroes, in particular, the young people assassinated by tyranny), the changes in nomenclature or the places of (re)released spaces, help to understand the convulsive circumstances of recent Cuban history, which made the Island a world reference.

Criterion (iv): The internal public spaces and architectural design of the University of Havana, as well as its imposing relationship with the city, are exceptional examples of the interpretation of neoclassical features on a university campus and the role of the University in the development and expansion of the metropolis.

It is worth noting the combination of the intimate and the monumental, perceptible in La Colina and transferred to other buildings built for university purposes in their premises. Unlike other colossal Cuban and foreign projects, of neoclassical style or the most recent Modern Monumental, La Colina exhibits an internal spatial disposition of absolute intentionality concerning the creation of a site, at a time dazzling and overwhelming, but also kind to the human scale, where coexist imposing areas with wooded interior courtyards located between the buildings and their surrounding spaces.

Human and colossal scale are fluidly connected, making use of the possibilities of the relief of its location and its privileged urban location. This also contributes to the relevance of an elaborate design of gardens and green areas that not only pays tribute to quality aesthetics but also avoids the rigors of a climate where it is hardly permissible to remain in outdoor spaces without minimal shade conditions.

La Colina exhibits a perfect axiality of the spatial structure, so dear to classical symmetry and order, but its design avoids monotonous mimicry. The uniqueness and coherence of the ensemble are noted The singularity and coherence of the complex are noted in the discreet, and therefore a more suggestive, relationship between the grandiose volumes and the exhaustive finishes of the spaces. The University of Havana, including the most important buildings located outside the Hill (the University Stadium or the current School of Biology, Arts and Letters, Chemistry, Stomatology, Veterinary Medicine, and the Institute of Applied Sciences and Technologies), in addition to the quality of its spatial solutions and excellent execution, incorporate solutions that accredit its belonging to the University  and   its   specific   knowledge,   contained   in  its   immovable   property  and furniture.

Personalized stained glass windows, architectural details, sculptural reliefs, and memorials, become support of common and specific elements.

Criterion (vi): The history of the University of Havana allows the understanding of the most significant historical- political events that have occurred in the American continent since the foundation of the Institution, with special emphasis on the last century. This circumstance, together with its status as a cultural and scientific epicenter, has enabled it to establish itself in the international imaginary as one of the symbols of Higher Education, endorsed by specialized and non-specialized publications.

The history of the University of Havana is rich in events whose relevance transcends the strictly national interest. Its campus, in particular its most widespread image (Escalinata Alma Mater- Rectorado), immediately refers to the intense rise of progressive student movements during the first decades of the last century. The University Student Federation (FEU) of Cuba, founded on December 20, 1920, in the heat of the Reform with its epicenter in the University of Córdoba, was recognized in the middle of the last century as the most important and influential student organization in the continent. The FEU, its traditions, events, and more outstanding personalities endow senses and deep meanings to the university and extra university spaces, verifiable in immaterial traditions (marches, pilgrimages), temporary exhibitions (Hall of the Martyrs), artistic collections, especially commemorative. In this regard, it should be noted that student traditions and history, their sustained defense of the ideals of social justice and prominence in political life, inspired the development of what we might call a symbolic urban landscape, an urban landscape of the Cuban student movement.

A sample of the most relevant artists of the twentieth century Cuban, especially of the pictorial and sculptural avant-garde, are represented in the heritage collection of the University of Havana. Some of its works establish relationships with its buildings and container spaces so narrow and indissoluble that it is imperative to consider them «buildings by destination» since otherwise their meaning and value would be substantially compromised. The Alma Mater of Havana is commonly referred to as the most important, best achieved, and most representative of its typology on a global scale. Figures of the highest stature of continental culture have been formed and have maintained ties of work and cooperation with the University. As a sample button, we highlight the ties of the novelist and Premio Cervantes Alejo Carpentier (1904-1980), and the prima ballerina assoluta Alicia Alonso with the Institution.

More than any other governmental space, not even the Government Palace, the Aula Magna, and the staircase are the two stages par excellence of great regional political events. In recent decades the most outstanding leaders of the continent have made the University of Havana their tribune, as well as former US President James Carter, and Nobel laureates in various disciplines of knowledge, among others. Pope John Paul II was received at the University, where he intervened in the Aula Magna, during that transforming apostolic visit (1998) for the relations of the Church-State which, largely cleared the way for more recently verified structural changes in regional geopolitics.

This makes the University of Havana not just a site whose material expression stands out for its quality and uniqueness, but an unavoidable milestone in regional history, basic to follow the directions of international politics. Its location in Cuba, in Havana, in addition to the certainty that the most radical revolutionary leaders, from Julio Antonio Mella to Fidel Castro, have made it a useful platform for the declaration of principles, suppose that it usually generates space for the announcement and foundation of substantial and novel political platforms. The institution combines its autonomous status, conducive to debate and measured reflection, with its role as a radical nucleus of socio-political changes of recognized global impact, such as the emergence of the Cuban Revolution, the USA-USSR confrontations associated with the Cold War (Capitalism vs. Socialism), the National Liberation Movements (MLN), among others. The duet of historic relevance and impressive artistic quality favors that the symbolic density of the University and the strength of its image exceed the local look and are recurrently cited in publications, audiovisual materials, specialized sites, and sites for scientific and cultural dissemination.

Déclarations d’authenticité et/ou d’intégrité

Despite the intensive use to which the University of Havana is subjected as a teaching center, attended daily by thousands of members of the intra- and extra-university community, it has historically preserved its attributes of integrity and authenticity. The modifications and additions introduced to La Colina and its surrounding spaces and buildings in previous decades are moderate and discreet and do not threaten its architectural and urban values. It has maintained its teaching and research use, and its social and cultural role since its foundation, becoming a national and international symbol of Higher Education, as well as an urban landmark in Havana and an outstanding expression of Cuban culture.

In recent years, investments and maintenance actions have been undertaken to restore the exterior and interior image of properties of recognized value (School of Physics, Rectorate, Noyola Building, Aula Magna) and, in the case of those that still demand major interventions (University Stadium or School of Biology, for example), their main needs have been identified to undertake interventions in the short and medium term.

Likewise, there is also a clear and institutional commitment to undertake other minor conservation- restoration actions in urban spaces and buildings, necessary to maximize the values of the campus. However, even with full knowledge of the relevance of the design and execution of maintenance actions in campus areas, the University of Havana boasts notable levels of authenticity and integrity that, as will be seen below, distinguish it from other foreign institutions.

The University of Havana was declared a National Monument of the Republic of Cuba in June 1978, which conferred a very high protection to its central campus, specifically to the University Hill. Our proposal includes these limits, as well as some areas that make possible the understanding of the urban and architectural values of the complex, a good part of them protected by the Vedado Protection Zone declaration. The University of Havana has, since September 2010, a specific management structure devoted to Heritage Conservation: The University Cultural Heritage Unit.

Comparaison avec d’autres biens similaires

Five universities have been inscribed on the World Heritage List between 1987 and 2013.

1987: Monticello and University of Virginia in Charlottesville (United States)

1998: Universidad y recinto histórico de Alcalá de Henares (Spain)

2000: Ciudad universitaria de Caracas (Universidad Central de Venezuela)

2007: Central Campus of the University City of the National Autonomous University of Mexico 2013: Universidad de Coimbra –Alta y Sofia (Portugal)

While the values of the universities inscribed on the World Heritage List are remarkable, taking into account the vastness of university traditions, their durability in human history, and their impact on the development of culture and science, the presence of the University on the List is certainly discreet. On the other hand, only two of those registered, Alcalá and Coimbra, support their record in the intrinsic values of the University as a social, cultural, and scientific entity basic to understanding the development of humanity in recent centuries.

First, in a comparative analysis that puts the University of Havana in dialogue with its international peers, it must start from a selection of properties with which it presents chronological, thematic, and typological similarities, following the frameworks defined in the reference text Filling the Gaps. At the national level, universities enjoy mostly legitimacy and legal protection, while on the World Heritage List, although they have accessed the same very significant examples, the presence is scarce and does not give full faith to the cultural values of the universities and their different stages of development, both historically and in its urban and architectural dimension.

The University of Havana, in addition to witnessing the roots and development of the European university model in the Americas and its active social, cultural, and scientific role, is one of the most important examples of an eclectic neoclassical campus on an international scale, comparable to some of the most recognized and famous. To justify this statement, we have selected four university groups:

• Columbia University, New York, USA
• The University of Austin (University of Texas at Austin), Texas, USA
• The University of Stanford, California, USA
• The Faculty of Law of the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina

Before commenting on the selected examples, it should be stated that the university typology that represents the current campus of the University of Havana is not represented in the World Heritage List, therefore, it seems to us more productive to show their contacts and singularities regarding these cases, with which they share temporal and stylistic links.

Columbia is the university complex with which the University of Havana shares greater analogies. Barely five years apart from its peers in Havana (recall the move to the Hill in early 1902), Columbia changed its former location (49th Street and Madison Avenue) in 1897 and occupied Morningside Heights. Although the change of location allowed for a necessary expansion, it maintained the trustees' desire not to leave the heart of New York, unlike other campuses located on the outskirts.

Columbia's move also allowed for a significant move, noticeable in the dominant architectural style and design of its spaces. Among the architects invited to propose projects for the new space stood out, and finally it was made with the commission, of Charles Follen McKim, of the well-known firm McKim, Mead, and White. Two of the most significant elements of the Master Plan proposed by McKim for Columbia were the replacement of the Neo-Gothic as a stylistic reference, prevalent in most American colleges and universities eager to connect to the European tradition, for the benefit of neoclassicism. Selecting Greece and Rome as paradigms involved pondering "the style which will appeal most to strongly to educated popular taste and will be most likely to secure an imposing architectural effect". In addition, McKim's project refrained from following the closed quadrangle scheme, inherited from the European tradition, and continued in other American projects such as the University of Chicago, also located in the city center and with a neo-Gothic image. The architect preferred to create computer axes for the whole, at whose intersections the most prominent buildings were located, thus avoiding the possible monotony and disconnection of the exclusive use of quadrangles and courtyards.

One of the most significant buildings and centers in which the main axes were cut is the Low Memorial Library, completed in 1897, and a significant example of neoclassical architecture of imposing external presence and elaborate interior, qualified by its majestic rotunda, the old reading room. It is this building that tops the monumental staircase where the Alma Mater, authored by Daniel Chester French, is located, particularly famous for its sculpture of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC.

This complex articulates the Low Square, which, although very efficient as a circulation space and of pleasant proportions, lacks the strength and urban impact of the Hill habanera, steeper and naturally adjusted to its topography (the levels of the whole of Columbia are artificial). At this point, it is worth taking up again how the sculpture of the Alma Mater habanera, not only turns out from a strictly aesthetic approach far superior to his pair of Columbia, but it assumes an obvious computer role as a whole. Its simpler composition and design contribute to the symmetry and perfect axiality of the Hill, perceptible even on the sides of the staircase, a circumstance that is not noticeable in the Low de Columbia square. Hardly another sculpture of the Alma Mater, considering examples known as the sculptural ensemble of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, exhibits greater functionality and symbolic density than that located in Havana.

Unlike the campus of La Habana, as a result of various pressures, in the last 50 years, modern buildings of low aesthetic quality were added to privileged sites. One example is the so-called Uris Hall, which concluded in 1962 under protests from professors and students of the university itself with the slogans No more uglies, we protest bad design, etc. In the case of the Cuban Institution, once the buildings of Pharmacy and Commercial Sciences were completed in 1940 (contemporaneous with the Butler Library of Columbia, completed in the late 1930s, and with stylistic similarities such as its large Ionic colonnades), the growth of the university did not affect the central campus that remains practically intact. In addition, according to American historians such as Andrew Dolkart, the construction of the Butler Library south of the complex compromised the university's relationship with New York City, while closing the campus that in its original design remained open towards the city.

It should be noted that in the most intense construction stages of Havana Hill, Between 1911 and 1940, other foreign universities experienced a similar boom and made use of the symbolic possibilities of eclecticism without resorting to the already well-known neo-gothic associated with university architecture. Two of them are Stanford University and the University of Austin, both founded in the late 19th century. Although they share their eclectic affiliation with the Havana Institution, they differ considerably in their image and concept from their island pair.

The University of Texas has a significant urban landmark that plays an articulating role, particularly for the university complex, but also in the city environment, with its main building with Torre- Mirador dated in 1936. This period, between 1925 and 1937, is estimated as the golden stage in the construction and design of the campus (A Building Era), counting around twenty buildings completed. The University dialogues harmoniously with the city, as its gleaming tower traces an axis with the majestic dome of the Texas State House of Representatives (Texas House of Representatives) (esplanades and staircases) towards the city center.

This property contains the main signs of the prevailing style at the University of Austin, a harmonious mixture between the neocolonial style and the Neo-Renaissance, since a substantial part of the buildings assumes some of the fundamental characteristics of the Renaissance palaces, both in facades and interiors (among them the pronounced cornices that finish well-differentiated levels).

In the case of Stanford, which was formally inaugurated in 1891 as a result of the initiative of Senator Stanford and his wife Jane in honor of their son Leland Jr., eclecticism takes on more diverse profiles. The university complex assimilates various historical references that pass from the conjunction of the Romanesque (Richardsonian Romanesque) and the so-called Mission Revival, in the founding quadrangle projected in the last decade of the nineteenth century; the neoclassical in the Museum of Stanford, concluded at the beginning of the last century or the neocolonial (Spanish colonial), warned in various properties such as Stanford Union or The Knoll.

A very significant example of the recovery of the classic codes in a magnificent university building can be seen towards the south of the American continent, in Buenos Aires. It is the Faculty of Law of the University of Buenos Aires, inaugurated in 1949 by then-President Juan Domingo Perón. Located in Avda. Figueroa Alcorta 2263, in Recoleta, the building replaced another small Neo-Gothic filiation where lawyers were formed until, with the impulse of the Peronist government, the project was completed which had been taken steps since the end of the previous decade. They stand out in the building, of dimensions certainly cyclopean, its front access constituted by a colonnade of fourteen Doric columns. Its majesty is accentuated by the staircase that allows the entrance to the building on its main facade, where it continues to the so-called great hall of Pasos Perdidos, an extension of 1200m2 and 14m high.

Of colossal urban presence and excellent interior functionality, both for university and cultural use in its broadest sense, it has been noted that this building, however, is outdated from the prevailing international trends (almost at the threshold of the decade of the 50). Its style and dimensions have to be understood, then, in the urban context of Buenos Aires, of a remarkably eclectic sign and as part of Peronist populism, expensive to excess and excessive. On the other hand, unlike the previous ensembles, it is a singular work, whose formal ties do not precisely dialogue with other buildings of university use, as with the grandiloquence of the city and its eclectic milestones of neoclassical inspiration.

These examples of the use of eclecticism on campus in the first half of the twentieth century, validate the diversity and extension of style in university architecture, and at the same time confirm the personality and singularity of the Havana ensemble, of enviable harmony and aesthetic coherence- conceptual in its urban and architectural dimension.