Unfinished Spaces

In 1961, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara commissioned three young architects – Riccardo Porro, Vittorio Garatti and Roberto Gottardi – to design and build the “Escuelas Nacionales” de Arte in Havana. The schools were to have been dedicated to the plastic arts, dramatics, dance and music. But the ambitious, visionary project for what was to have been “the world’s most beautiful art academy”, built on the grounds of the Cubanacan Country Club, was interrupted in 1965 and never finished. Filmed between Cuba, Venice, Milan and Paris, the film documents the story of the art schools through archival footage and the testimonies of the architects, several of their collaborators and of students who, in the 60s and afterwards, attended courses there. It’s also a reconstruction of the schools’ vicissitudes up to our time. They’ve recently been rediscovered and internationally recognized as an architectural masterpiece of the revolutionary period. The Cuban government has invited the three designers to complete their project.