National Art School

This guide to the National Art School in Havana follows architect Ricardo Porro, who told his students the school's curved brick domes were shaped like a woman's body, part of a 1957 manifesto for what he called an architecture rooted in Cuba's African soul. It traces how Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, playing golf at Havana's most exclusive country club, decided on the spot that its lawns should become a free art school for the revolution, and how Porro built it around courtyards he called symbolic voids, using brick instead of embargo-scarce steel. You'll hear why construction stopped in 1965 and Porro left Cuba accused of architectural heresy. Look closely at the terracotta rings spiraling toward the keyhole of light overhead.