Life and Death of the Courtyard House
Migration, Metissage and Assasination of a Typology
By Cristina Amoruso and Orestes del Castillo

Historic antecedents of the courtyard house
The Ancients, the Renaissance and Spain

One can go far back in the history of housing to find the first examples of courtyard houses. It is well known that both the Greeks and the Romans utilized this type of housing profusely as several examples are documented. Vitruvius, for example, in the Sixth Book of his Treatise, dissects and analyzes early examples.

He demonstrates how the Greek and Roman colonies produced a typology that responded to the climatological conditions and, of course, their socio-political organization. In other words, he demonstrates how the development of laws and the mercantile nature of these societies were deeply influential in the interpretation of architectural space in the Mediterranean, especially in the private realm of the house.

In discussing the urban house typologies that can be found in Pompeii and Rome, Vitruvius identifies five different styles of houses termed according to their construction as follows: tuscan, corinthian, tetrastyle, despluviate, and testudinate. The structural and spatial solution for these variations of the same typology had a common element for all house types: the atrium or central open area, which can be considered as the core of the house. It had a climatological function, helping the ventilation and illumination of the house and collecting the rain water for its further usage in the household. Plants and fountains were often added to mitigate the heat and the dryness of the climate in certain latitudes.

The atrium was at the same time the generator of centrifugal and centripetal movements in relationship with the functions of the house. For example, the rooms at the entrance of the house were organized around the atrium in an orderly fashion, permitting the access to this central area, which was the hub of the social life of the family. At the same time, the circulation was designed to surround the atrium in a ceremonial way, transforming the daily activities in daily rituals and providing every member of the family with a role to be performed at different hours of the day. Privacy was achieved by subtly dissimulating the doors and windows with plants or sculptural ornaments, treating the atrium as a formal reception area.

The atrium houses also had a bigger courtyard, which was surrounded by a gallery or peristyle designed in the garden fashion, for more private use by the family members. The bedrooms and the family dining room opened to the courtyard which was the perfect scenery for the familyís private life. Women and children were often relegated to this part of the house whenever the men met to discuss business or politics. This dual atrium-courtyard illustrates the duality of the genders in Pompeian and Roman societies, obviously inherited from the Greeks.

The Greek house did not have an atrium, but instead had two formal courtyards also surrounded by peristyles. The back part of the house was destined to the everyday work, a womenís domain where the mistress of the house directed the wool spinners, cooks and other servants. The gender segregation in the Greek house was defined by the division of the work, as ruled and accepted by their social conventions and laws. The Greek word for this section of the house is "gynaeconitis", which rendered evident the separation between the male and female worlds. The men generally occupied the front section of the house or "andronis" to conduct the public part of the business and to receive numerous merchants, colleagues and clients. Banquets were generally held with the sole assistance of men.

The social position of the owner of the house was determinant in the disposition of the rooms and of course in the overall design conception of the house. Hierarchy was a sensitive issue and the social condition of the family was expressed with the luxury proper to the rank of the head of the family. Many of the urban examples had rental spaces, guest apartments, offices related to the business of the owners, merchantís warehouses or studios for the artist protected by the rich patron who owned the house. Mixed use was certainly born during the Roman Empire and Greek Republicsí most prosperous days; there dwelling and business were twins siblings improving the quality and character of city life.

Alberti, Serlio, Vignola and Palladio documented the Vitruvian experiences and applied his principles to their designs. Their architectural treatises and manuals were brought to the Americas along with the skills of the "alarifes", the masons and masterbuilders from the recently re-Christianized and reunified Spain. The domestic architecture in Spain was deeply marked by the long years of war against the Moors. The mediaeval towns had a dense fabric and the country farmhouses were isolated. The life of the family was held in seclusion as a form of defense against the invaders. The roots of the early Latin American domestic architecture can be traced to the towns where the founders of their namesake cities came from.

Spanish Mediaeval courtyard houses

In the case of Mediaeval Spain, the northern portion of the country was influenced by the Gothic architectural tradition associated with the Pan-European pilgrimage to the city of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. The manor houses were veritable fortresses designed to repel Muslim and Barbarian raids. Many of these houses had a central courtyard, where the ownerís family and their pilgrims guests kept the horses, gathered, and conducted business.

In Southern Spain the Moorish and Hispanic-Arabic population lived in relative peace with the Spaniards and the Jews, especially in Andalusia. Most of the cities were colonies founded during the Roman Empire with a tradition in patio house architecture. These cities and houses were subsequently occupied by different waves of settlers as the Goths, Visgoths, Celts, Moors, and Jews who left their influences deeply embedded in the architecture of the Iberian Peninsula.

As noted in the "Responsa" -which were legal litigation documents prepared and kept by rabbis or talmudic scholars- mediaeval Jews referred to their houses with the term "courtyard" rather than "house". This documents reveal that the houses were built around a courtyard frequently leading to an alley. In the seclusion of the Jewish quarters, patios were very often used for business purposes or as a space for religious or legal meetings. Considering the extensive documentation kept by the European Jewry for legal matters, it can be said that the sharing of property was not common practice among the Jews. This leads to think that the Jewish courtyard house was, most of the time, a single family house.

The Moorish house had another use and interpretation for the courtyard. It was meant as a place for the private ritual of religious ablutions and also a space destined to family solace, one of the few private areas shared by men and women in the Muslim household. The Christians instead used their patios to fulfill different business necessities and to enjoy family life. In the cities under Moorish rule the patio was also used for religious purposes and for community meetings. The family used the patio as an open area for household tasks as cooking, laundry, and keeping poultry and goats. It was also normal to maintain a herbal garden, collect rain water or have a well.

After the "Reconquista" the Muslim and Jewish populations were forced to convert to Catholicism and consequently intermarried with the Christians. Many of their traditions were kept alive by assimilating into the victorsí customs and, eventually, they were brought to the Americas, along with the formal repertoire of design from Northern Spain. Once in American lands, these two ways of envisioning the patio house coincided. Architecture was the most perdurable expression of this cultural complexity in the New World.

New World, New Houses

The oldest city in the Caribbean and the New World is Santo Domingo, founded in 1502. In this city some of the buildings have a clear mediaeval ancestry; this is illustrated by the fact that some of the first erected are Gothic in character. The tracery of their arches and the shape of their windows denotes that their builders came from the military families of Northern Spain. Later other influences and traditions followed this severe Castillian austerity, although regardless of time and provenance of the settlers the patio remained a constant design element.

Of great importance is the influence of the exuberant Moorish style which came to the Caribbean shores and exchanged influences with earlier structures producing the first examples of the Caribbean patio house. This new typology extended all throughout the islands as the Crown colonized them. From Santo Domingo, the Spanish Crown sent its men to Cuba and Puerto Rico. Only fifty years since the founding of Santo Domigo had passed, yet new settlements like San Juan in Puerto Rico and the Seven Villas in Cuba already had a different feel.

The most completely conserved example is Old Havana, founded in 1519, where architecture as an expression of the colonial power was the most durable symbol of the Spanish Catholic Kingdom. The Spanish soldiers, hardened by the prolonged warfare against the Moors, were anxious to conquer the lands of the New World. Men who were not the first born in their families and thus could not inherit in Spain were promised nobility titles and fortune in the Americas. With them, European architecture traveled from the first settlements in the Caribbean to Tierra Firme as part of the colonization. From Cuba departed several expeditions, among them the invasion and colonization of Mexico by Hernan Cortes and several attempts to conquer Florida, that led the Spanish as far as what is know today as Louisiana and North Carolina.

In Florida, Saint Augustine became a permanent Spanish settlement. Founded in 1565, it is the first city of North America, and as expected, here too the patio house flourished together with military installations. The founder of Saint Augustine, Don Pedro Mendez de Aviles, and many of his men originated from Asturias and from this province in Northern Spain they imported a house typology preceding from the Cantabric coast with a more closed house and side patios. However, in Mendez de Avilesí expedition were also enrolled Andalusians and men from what can be considered the first Cuban generation, who built houses featuring a central patio with all the characteristics from their precedent houses in Andalusia and Havana.

In Saint Augustine, the different and successive invasions and occupations by the English, French and Spaniards modeled the traditional house in a special fashion, evolving first with the changes of the mother country and finally adopting a metisse nature. This also happened on all the Caribbean islands which were occupied by different colonial powers alternatively due to wars, change of allegiances, and all kind of political turmoil .

"This was the case of the Haitian Revolution that started on August 22, 1791 when the slaves defeated and expelled the French Army and ended on November 28, 1803, when Haiti was declared a republic. This case is of particular interest because even after the revolution the "liberated slaves" continued to live in the very same houses that had been originally developed by the gentlemen planters and bureaucratic administrators. These had taken the lesson from the neighboring Spanish Santo Domingo and built "des maisons des plantations cafetaliers" much to the fashion and taste of the Dominican "haciendas"; after all, the island was known as "La Espaniola". When the revolution came these French settlers moved across the Paso de los Vientos and brought their variances of the patio house, urban and rural, to Santiago de Cuba and Guantanamo on the Eastern portion of Cuba, where they were assimilated to the local Creole culture. They also went to Cienfuegos, a Neo-Classical city on the central southern shore of Cuba, to which they formally contribute to give in 1830, the title of city, under Spanish colonial authorities supervision and control. Some of the French former colonists moved to Louisiana, where their architecture received influences from the Spanish missions and the excellent craftsmanship from the Acadians, who had been deported from Quebec by the British.

"In the case of Mexico, including Texas and California, the patio house developed also into a rural typology, the "hacienda" or "rancho" becoming in some cases veritable fortifications because of the violent nature of colonization, the confrontation with the Amerindians, and with other colonial armies. On the haciendas and ranchos the patio had a scale such that it was able to house functions related to the operation of a cattle farm or the agricultural production.

The colonization of the Central and South American hinterlands departed from the newly founded coastal and port cities on the Caribbean shoreline. Cumana, which was founded in the Venezuelan Caribbean in 1522 is the first city of the South American continent. It marked the first step in the colonization of the Southern portion of the New World. It was also a fortified city to stop the advances of the English, Dutch and French. The patio house arrive in the mind of the conquerors and Cumana can be defined as its port of entry in South America. The civil architecture of Cumana and its sister cities on the Venezuelan coast of the Caribbean Basin responded to the same climatological and social conditions that were present in the islands as well as the religious, administrative and military architecture. The rural patio house derived more to the "hacienda" typology as the conquerors entered the virgin territories.

Nonetheless, the urban patio house in the South American Caribbean followed the same patterns of development as that of the houses of Old Havana. This fact could be explained by the economical interdependence between Havana and South America, especially during the heyday of the Spanish Fleet, which transported the American booties to the Iberian Peninsula as it is the case of Panama, founded in 1519, and Cartagena de Indias, founded on January 21, 1533. Departing from this avant-garde post, the Colombian patio house initiated its travel to the interior of the country. In many occasions, the house originated from a humble shed, but successive additions due to family and fortune growth and changes in land occupancy, gradually shaped the house to the Caribbean patio house model. Again, urban life, commerce and the trades proper of the city development modeled the typology as it was in Old Havana. In the case of Cartagena de Indias, it was a veritable sister city of Havana. The Fleet departed form Cartagena de Indias to Havana and commercial traffic between the two cities contributed to develop a similar design pattern to the residences of their inhabitants. For example, the use of the "entresuelos", the zaguan and the accesorias, very often rented to local artisans, and the distribution of spaces, including the patio and the traspatio, was practically the same. The division of work inside the house, with all the "male" spaces in the front and the "entresuelo", generally related to the import and export business activities, and the private "female" spaces on the upper floor "galeria" (in the case of the mistress of the house) devoted to lecture and embroidery. The mistress of the house also ran the household, dealing with the domestic slaves servants, cooks and food suppliers.

Havana: a city of patio houses

The typology of the patio house was imported to Cuba by the first Spaniard settlers. In the Seven Villas founded by orders of the Spanish Crown in Cuba, where it gradually evolved due to the climate and economic needs of its inhabitants, this typology appears not only in private houses but -not without some variations- in palaces and convents as well. Their presence in Havana can be traced back as far as in the 16th century, just after the foundation of the city, and its evolution continued to the recycling of some of these buildings in the 20th century.

In the early examples in Havana the patio house was a real mixed-use building. Some of its ground floor rooms were destined to accommodate commercial facilities. Those rooms -which are known by their Spanish name: "accesorias"- were rented by the owner of the house to local artisans or storekeepers as a source of revenue, although some of them could be used by the owner as storage space for his own business. The patio house also contained a mezzanine level -in Spanish: entresuelo- usually used as the servant's living quarters and the owner's office space.

The patio was accessed through the zaguan and it was a veritable plaza at the houseís scale. In this private realm the family had an oasis of peace in contrast with the animation of the streets. On the upper level, galleries surrounded the patio, like the balconies on the city square. Some rooms were opened to the patio or the galleries like dining rooms. The daybed for siestas was a common feature in protected areas.

The patio also had an utilitarian function: to adequate the house to the tropical climate by providing the rooms with ventilation and light and -in some cases- to collect the rain water for household uses in a special cistern: the aljibe. Thus, the patio was both a sustainable ecological response to the weather and also a social device to keep the inhabitants in touch; at the same time it also served as a means to draw certain conventional lines between family and servants and also between the sexes.

Some buildings had a patio destined to the servants and it was set up for their domestic occupations: the "traspatio". In this area the servants washed the kitchen utensils, repaired furniture and -in the case they had an indoor stable- bathed the horses. This is the case of the patio house on the corner of Brasil and Aguiar, in Old Havana, which is described by Prat Puig as "a Moorish house. The same compositional and organizational patterns could be observed in many other houses in Old Havana.

During the late days of the 18th century, with the construction of the road known as Calzada de Monte" and the foundation of the town of "El Cerro" in 1807, the patio house reached another step in its evolution. In "El Cerro" the Neo-Classical model prevailed over the Moorish or Andalusian typology seen in Old Havana. The Neo-Classical formal codes did not see the patio house as appropriate for the new social class and the predominantly Creole society to be established in the new town. The Villa was the new architectural fashion to followes that bucolic environment.

In the meantime, the patio house in Old Havana suffered several transformations. It was divided in apartments which shared the common central open space. The were known as "casas de vecinos" as they are still known today in Andalucia, Spain. Some of the rental spaces were incorporated to the new remodeled rental residences, while the ownerís family moved out of the historic center, probably to their new villa in "El Cerro". In other cases some families kept their houses in the Old City, near their commercial or political interests. However, their houses were remodeled in order to accept a way of life not mainly marked by trade but by the lifestyle led by their inhabitants, who were transformed from merchants into socialites.

In the city expansion of the 19th and 20th Centuries, after the demolition of the city walls was born " La Habana Nueva"  in opposition of what started to be known as "La Habana Vieja". In la Habana Nueva the patio house evolved as follows:

1. Along the commercial avenues it gained an arcade and kept the mixed use quality of the old "accesorias" by having commercial space on the ground floor. In non-commercial streets, the ground floor was kept as a residential area.

2. The "entresuelo" disappeared in favor of retail space or a first floor apartment.

3. The typology lost the central patio because of the new distribution of property in narrower parcels. The patio became an island enclosed by a building in the shape of a "C". By looking at an aerial photograph of the area, it is evident that the symmetry of two of those new "C" plan houses make the old central patio influence very evident. The ventilation shaft -"patinejo"- was born in order to provide the light and ventilation that the rooms needed after this typological transformation, although in quite a small amount.

With the construction of the villas in el Vedado, el Cerro -the outskirts of late 1800s and the early 1900s Havana- and the beach houses in Varadero a new element appeared: the "portal"  . It is a derivative of the Italian loggias and the verandah of the anglo-indian bungalow. Along with the "patio", the multicolored glazing of the "vitrales" and the louvered windows known as "persianas", the "portal" completed the most important characteristics of the Cuban house which also appeared in the rest of the Caribbean Islands.

In the case of "El Vedado", the houses which were built by the coast kept the traditional patio typology until the end of the Independence War. During the early Republican Period and under the influence of the French Neo-Classicism and the American Eclecticism, most of these houses were radically transformed to suit the new wave of bourgeois taste. The French, Cuban and American architects practicing in Havana developed the typology of the eclectic villa which had a surrounding garden and in some cases a small private patio, most of the time associated to the living or dining area. This kind of space was known as "patio interior o jardin interior.

With the successive growth of the city, always to the West, the better positioned classes abandoned their old residences to occupy the new neighborhoods. Some of the old buildings were kept as rental properties while some others were just abandoned. The abandoned ones were immediately taken over by the dispossessed, who set marginal housing in them, what is known as "solares". There are rental solares as well, since some owners divided the old patio house in small rental cubicles to make the biggest possible profit out of them. Their were immediately occupied by people who came to the city as immigrants from the countryside or from abroad in search of better opportunities. This situation is nowadays revived and the process of "solarizacion" constantly clashes with the restoration or renovation of several buildings within the old city.

Solarización: street-wise urban economy

The "solarizacion"process in the present day has been triggered and aggravated by some of the restoration efforts in Old Havana, many of them bearing all the most recognizable traits of gentrification. While traditional mixed use buildings in Old Havana are refurbished to contain tourist-only oriented commercial facilities, the forcibly evicted residents refuse to abandon their old neighborhood and take on even more dilapidated buildings as squatter residential quarters. The inhabitants of the occupied buildings then return to what is the most natural pattern in urban development and economics: mixed use. Here, the dwellings share the same space with their informal and marginal businesses since the communist administration does not allow the free enterprise formula of markets.

Artisans, artist workshops and galleries, private restaurants, cafes and, lately, discotheques and transvestite cabarets are opening their doors wherever the enterprising squatters settle, which demonstrates that the city is a living economic organism. Not surprisingly, the tourist floating population and the locals mingle in these privately-run facilities far from the governmentís control. Since many of these buildings still have the patio structure as their functional core, some of these commercial activities take place in the ground floor and are eventually extended to the patio and the street, activating the link between the public and private realms. This return to the normal patterns of behavior in a human settlement is reminiscent of the laws that rule nature. The city and the buildings, as living organisms return to the habits and instincts long ago determined by genetic information, -in an urban-Darwinist twist- they become more fit to survive as a colony of highly organized intelligent beings.

The evolving city grid and the transformation of the patio house

The urban grid in Old Havana is almost regular and can be described as a regular square grid. The slight irregularities in the lay-out of the city can be attributed to inaccuracies of the instruments used to trace the streetsí course and in the surveying of the city blocks, which were defined by the growth of the urban enclave. The blocks are approximately squared to the measure of forty meters, in some cases growing to almost sixty meters on each side, but the parcels on each block do not seem to have any regular or standard shape or size, due to the fact of the irregular pattern of the acquisition of property.

The land was adjudicated to the first settlers and the legal descriptions and partitions were controlled and ruled by the Cabildo or city government. With the passage of time, the legal situation of the parcels and plots became very complex and not always a one lot-one building situation represented the occupation and use of the land. Thus, some of the buildings were constructed on two or more parcels having different owners, or two or more buildings with different owners were constructed on the same parcel.

In La Habana Nueva, the urban fabric was defined by the regulating concept of the square grid, which was only broken by the irregularities of the coast, natural topographical and hydrographical accidents, and the borders with Old Havana on the lands where the city walls once stood. The typical city block in La Habana Nueva is a square whose sides are sixty meters, but these grew to eighty meters towards the city western edge. The irregular city blocks present a wide variety of shapes and sizes which can be easily appreciated on the coastal edge of Malecon. The most common property lot within the city block is a rectangle that is ten meters wide and thirty to forty meters long.

In the case of El Cerro, where baronial manors built as summer residences existed prior to the city expansion, the urban grid was identical in size to those in La Habana Nueva. Nevertheless, the new blocks filled the remaining spaces between the existing rich properties, providing the new development with a certain irregularity that was accentuated by the presence of hills, water streams and the aqueduct. In El Cerro the typical small parcel where the regular house sits coexists in harmony with the sizable plot of the manorial villas.

The grid of El Vedado followed the sea contour gaining some land from the littoral. All the streets and avenues lead to the sea, because the one hundred meter square grid is rotated forty five degrees in relation with the geographical North, with the only exception of the fifty hectares devoted to the Colon Necropolis which are oriented along the cardinal North-South and East-West lines. The normal irregularities occur where the two grids collide and along the Malecon and Almendares River on the Western border of el Vedado and on the border with La Habana Nueva and its North-South oriented city grid. The typical parcel of El Vedado is twelve and a half meters by fifty meters, with the exception of the richest residences that very often occupy the entire block. The summer residences that were the first mansions erected in el Vedado, were laid out following the aforementioned planning principle, so there were not substantial contradictions when the rest of the neighborhood, a veritable city onto itself, was built.

All these changes in city block sizes and orientation and in their partition into parcels defined a new fate for the housing typology. During the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth century the house was constrained to a significantly smaller lot. The new parcels were, most of the time, a half or a third of the size of the typical parcel to be found in Old Havana. At this point, the only solution was to pair two almost-symmetrical houses and to use the central space as a divided patio for illumination and ventilation purposes.

Thus, the patio house experimented a substantial transformation, since the central courtyard was bisected and two independent buildings shared an open space. The rooms were arranged around the patio and they could be accessed from a gallery. While located along city-zoned commercial arteries, the ground floor included rooms for commercial activities that faced the sidewalk and an interior dwelling opened to the patio. The upper floors were occupied by more ample houses, which commonly took up the whole space. This way, the single-family patio house was transformed into a multi-family building, which was known as "edificio de casas-apartamentos". These buildings were the most common solution for housing in La Habana Nueva, El Cerro and El Vedado. The mixed use was kept in the most lively streets of the city where living and business shared the same urban landscape with all the inherent comfort and benefits for the citizenry. Even today, the mixed use is kept to a minimum, but it ensures a safer environment in regards to what is commonly found in suburban developments.

Ironically, the decay of the patio house commenced when modernist airs started to sweep the traditional streets of Havana during the late twenties. Instead of learning from history, the leading figures of the finances and real state market asked their architects to follow the recipes offered by the pioneers of the Style Moderne. The architects discovered that, in those times, success was not related to respect for culture but to the application of a formula that had very little to do with collective memory and the ecological response to the housing problem. Balconies, patios, casement windows, jalousies, high ceilings and tree-shading were suddenly considered "retro". The "avant-gardiste" cubic forms of the Art Deco took over the urban environment on both sides of the Florida Straits. The patio house was the first sacrificial lamb killed in the name of "Order and Progress".

The transformation of the patio house

During the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth century the house was constrained to a significantly smaller lot. The new parcels were, most of the time, a half or a third of the size of the typical parcel to be found in Old Havana. At this point, the only solution was to pair two almost-symmetrical houses and to use the central space as a divided patio for illumination and ventilation purposes.

Thus, the patio house experimented a substantial transformation, since the central courtyard was bisected and two independent buildings shared an open space. The rooms were arranged around the patio and they could be accessed from a gallery. While located along city-zoned commercial arteries, the ground floor included rooms for commercial activities that faced the sidewalk and an interior dwelling opened to the patio. The upper floors were occupied by more ample houses, which commonly took up the whole space. This way, the single-family patio house was transformed into a multi-family building, which was known as "edificio de casas-apartamentos". These buildings were the most common solution for housing in La Habana Nueva, El Cerro and El Vedado. Mixed use was kept in the most lively streets of the city where living and business shared the same urban landscape with all the inherent comfort and benefits for the citizenry. Even today, mixed use is kept to a minimum, but it ensures a safer environment in regards to what is commonly found in suburban developments.

Ironically, the decay of the patio house commenced when modernist airs started to sweep the traditional streets of Havana during the late twenties. Instead of learning from history, the leading figures of the finance and real state market asked their architects to follow the recipes offered by the pioneers of the Style Moderne. The architects discovered that, in those times, success was not related to respect for culture but to the application of a formula that had very little to do with collective memory and the ecological response to the housing problem. Balconies, patios, casement windows, jalousies, high ceilings and tree-shading were suddenly considered "retro". The "avant-gardiste" cubic forms of the Art Deco took over the urban environment on both sides of the Florida Straits. The patio house was the first sacrificial lamb killed in the name of "Order and Progress".

Exile, explosion and exploitation of a dream

During a student revolt against the teaching of classical architecture and the Beaux Arts methods at the School of Architecture of the University of Havana -two decades earlier than the Parisian May 1968- the Vignolas and other classical treatises were burned. Curiously, the rebels were the same who, once turned into architects in the fifties, turned to colonial architecture looking for their national cultural roots.

In the late 1940ís and in the 1950ís their patrons were nationalistic intellectuals who commissioned them to design patio houses. However, these patio houses were not located in the traditional urban context but in the city extension of Miramar. They were a nostalgic literary translation of a typology, but they were not related to each other nor to the surrounding city. This translation resulted in fact in an alliteration because the patio house was never meant to be a single family house detached from the dense urban fabric. By then, mixed use was totally lost.

After the revolution of 1959, the majority of these architects fled the island. They went to Venezuela, Puerto Rico and Florida. The new patio house ideal went to exile with them. The Caribbean experience started a new cycle with the displaced architects who encountered that in South America and the Caribbean their peers shared their professional inquietudes, but political and economical realities prevented them from experimenting. Today, with the return to the values of traditional urbanism and energy efficient housing, the patio house is experiencing a renaissance and it is shyly reappearing on all the islands, be it because of a nostalgic fashion or as the result of a conscious attempt by the local architects.

The young architects of Santo Domingo and Puerto Rico are also returning to their local constructive traditions even though they seem to be experimenting with the language of deconstructivism or the late modernist grammar. But their inquietudes are leading them to recognize the values of traditional architecture as the ecologically sustainable solution and the correct social alternative. At the same time they are forced to confront the contradictions posed to the population by the imported model homes and the suburban model of development, totally alien to their cultural roots. The change will be noticeable in the next few years.

In Miami, Trelles Architects -a design trio of Cuban background- and Teofilo Victoria, who practices together with Maria de la Guardia -he was born in Cartagena de Indias, she was born in Cuba- show a great understanding of Caribbean architecture and culture. Their architecture continues and reinterprets the traditions of the patio house in the tropical milieu, both in the city context and as a detached house. However, mixed use is kept out by the current construction and zoning codes, and by the developers as well, who effectively influence the market and do not encourage urban solutions different from the white picket fence and automobile infested suburbia.

The assassination of a typology

The present day politics of housing, poor professional practice in architecture and planning, a non ecological approach to the design problem, building codes, land speculation and zoning have contributed to the assassination of the patio house typology.

The patio house, nÈe as the happy marriage between culture and form, has unfortunately lost much of its meaning. Originally one of the principal agents in the organization of urban space -principally the respect for the street as continuous space, an emphasis on the expression on the collective over the individual identity of residential units, and a transition between the public and private realms via semipublic space, now sits in uncertainty as it expects its role to better defined.

Transplanted in suburbia it is for the most part a Disneyesque copy of a form that evokes the peaceful dwellings and life of the Caribbean and Mexico. This, combined with the practical functionality of its form makes it a favorite of developers, particularly in the southwestern United States; however, it is inward-looking but does not contain mixed-use functions, it makes the best use of a small lot but the interior patio -when it exists- is at times as large as a closet, and its happiest residents are empty-nesters who happily do without a lawn to mow every weekend.

But there are exceptions and it is in this positive outlook that we must look at the new patio house. Perhaps its future in the United States is as a hybrid, a product of the American diversity, a quilt more than a melting pot where every patch conserves its individuality while adding it to the whole. In this light the new patio house is neither insular like its preceptor nor open like a traditional suburban-style home, it doesnít isolate neighbors as most houses with large front lawns do in suburban communities, but it only timidly breaks the barrier.

Needless to say, until architects, planners, investors and politicians understand the city and the nature of urban fabric they will not succeed in making the regulations change. Until then, the patio house will be like an exotic animal in captivity, beautiful and fascinating, but with the inner sadness of being where it does not belong.

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 Perez Montas p.65

Manucy, John. The Houses of Saint Augustine.

Gasparini, Graziano. La arquitectura colonial en Venezuela. Caracas: Armitano, 1985.

Gutierrez, Samuel A. Arquitectura panameña. Descripcion e historia. Panama: Universidad de Panama., 1966.

Corradine, Alberto. Historia de la arquitectura colombiana. Volumen - Colonia 1538-1850. Bogota: Biblioteca de Cundinamarca., 1989.

Rodriguez, Eduardo Luis and Maria Elena Martin. Guia de Arquitectura de la Habana. Sevilla: Oficina del Historiador de la Ciudad / Junta de Andalucia, 1992.

Prat Puig, Francisco. El Prebarroco en Cuba. Una escuela criolla de arquitectura morisca. La Habana: Junta Nacional de Arqueologia y Etnografia., 1947. pp 20- 46.

Weiss, Joaquin E. La Arquitectura Cubana del Siglo XIX. La Habana: Publicaciones de la Junta Nacional de Etnologia, 1960.

This part of the city is known in the present days as Centro-Habana

Eugenio Batista. Patios, Portales y Persianas: the Cuban House. Originally published in Artes Plasticas, Vol. 2, 1960. Translated from the Spanish by Raul Garcia. Herencia, Volume 3, number 1. Spring-Summer 1997. Coral Gables. Florida.

Caribbean Style.

The influence of the new trends brought by Forestier and Cuban architects that were students at Beaux Arts is evident.

Periferia. A cyberspace architectural magazine. http://www.periferia.org

By Orestes del Castillo
del.castillo @juno.com