Modernism and the Cuban Revolution: Architecture and Literature

Modern architects flocked to Cuba during the 1950s: Mies, Sert, Neutra, Becket, Harrison & Abramovitz worked in Havana and built a gleaming city of modern towers, which appear as the setting of fictional works by Cabrera Infante, Reinaldo Arenas, Alejo Carpentier, and films by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Mikhail Kalatozov and others. After the 1959 Revolution, these modern spaces are re-purposed, re-fashioned and re-worked for use by a socialist government, recalling the Situationist strategy of detournement. How are these spaces read by writers and filmmakers? And how did the Revolution alter their function?