Unfinished Spaces
Architecture & Design (collection) • 1h 26m
Directed by Alysa Nahmias, Benjamin Murray • Documentary • 2012 • 86 minutes
Cuba's ambitious National Art Schools project, designed by three young artists, Ricardo Porro, Vittorio Garatti, and Roberto Gottardi, in the wake of Castro's Revolution, is neglected, nearly forgotten, then ultimately rediscovered as a visionary architectural masterpiece.
In 1961, three young, visionary architects were commissioned by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara to create Cuba's National Art Schools on the grounds of a former golf course in Havana, Cuba. Construction of their radical designs began immediately and the school's first classes soon followed. Dancers, musicians and artists from all over the country reveled in the beauty of the schools, but as the dream of the Revolution quickly became a reality, construction was abruptly halted and the architects and their designs were deemed irrelevant in the prevailing political climate. Forty years later the schools are in use, but remain unfinished and decaying. Castro has invited the exiled architects back to finish their unrealized dream.
UNFINISHED SPACES features intimate footage of Fidel Castro, showing his devotion to creating a worldwide showcase for art, and it also documents the struggle and passion of three revolutionary artists.
Up Next in Architecture & Design (collection)
-
How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr...
Directed by Norberto López Amada & Carlos Carcas • Documentary • With Norman Foster, Buckminster Fuller, Cai Guo-Qiang, Anish Kapoor, Richard Rogers, Richard Serra • 2010 • 80 minutes
Born in Manchester, England, on the wrong side of the tracks, Norman Foster rose from a humble working class...
-
The Oyler House: Richard Neutra's Des...
Directed by Michael Dorsey • Documentary • With Kelly Lynch • 2012 • 46 minutes
In 1959, a government employee named Richard Oyler, living in the tiny desert town of Lone Pine, California, asked world-famous modern architect Richard Neutra to design his modest family home. To Oyler's surprise, N...
-
Renzo Piano: The Architect of Light
Directed by Carlos Saura • Documentary • 2018 • 110 minutes
Carlos Saura celebrates the relationship between architecture and cinema as imagined by Renzo Piano, the Genoese architect who designed some of the most significant contemporary buildings in the world.
