Published Books
Old Havana / La Habana Vieja: Spirit of the Living City / El espíritu de la ciudad viva (English and Spanish Edition)
by Chip Cooper (Author), Néstor Martí (Author), Eusebio Leal Spengler (Foreword), Dean Robert Olin (Foreword), Philip D. Beidler (Contributor), Ms. Magda Resik Aguirre (Contributor)
Old Havana: Spirit of the Living City artistically captures the architecture, people, and daily life of La Habana Vieja (Old Havana) through the lenses of two visionary photographers and colleagues, one American and the other Cuban.
Chip Cooper and Néstor Martí began collaborating in 2008, documenting the picturesque features of the oldest and most historically rich quarter in Cuba’s capital city at the behest of Eusebio Leal Spengler, the historian of the city of Havana and the director of the Habana Vieja restoration project. Cooper’s and Martí’s images highlight the spirit of change and renewal underlying the restoration of this international treasure and its revival as a vibrant business and residential area.
Inspired by the work of twentieth century American photographer Walker Evans, Cooper and Martí, through perspectives both unique and deeply entwined, capture the humanity of the city, in a language at once universal and transcendent.
Havana Modern: Twentieth-Century Architecture and Interiors
by Michael Connors (Author), Nestor Marti (Photographer), Ricardo Porro (Foreword)
A revealing collection of astonishingly fresh and undiscovered midcentury architecture and interiors in Havana. Caribbean design expert and historian Michael Connors leads the reader on an unprecedented tour in Havana of the stunning and architecturally important private homes and buildings that have been meticulously preserved, previously unphotographed, and mostly inaccessible to visitors. This lavish book represents the modern movement in Cuban architecture, from art nouveau and art deco to the flowering of high modernism just before the Revolution, spanning from the early 1900s to 1965. At a time when travelers are rediscovering Cuba, this volume offers a range of the city’s twentieth-century cultural achievements. The photographs, shot exclusively for the book, show examples from the artsy Vedado neighborhood, the seaside streets of Miramar, Central Havana, and Havana’s posh Country Club Park area. Included are iconic places such as Cuba’s remarkably futuristic National Schools of Art; the art deco landmark Bacardi building; Casa de Alfred von Schulthess by Richard Neutra; the stylish Habana Riviera Hotel, and its original 1957 interiors; the Hotel Nacional de Cuba designed by McKim, Mead & White, on Havana’s seaside drive the Malecón; and the world-famous Tropicana cabaret nightclub by architect Max Borges. Havana Modern is a pioneering book of modern design that shows a corner of the world where modern architecture thrived and has been carefully preserved.
Other Books
Great Houses of Havana
by Hermes Mallea
Great Houses of Havana celebrates one hundred years of creativity, design, and style that made the city "the Paris of the Caribbean." For four hundred years, Havana was the center of Spanish trade in the western hemisphere. With the expansion of the sugar industry, independence from Spain, and North American investment, Havana became a city of great wealth, great style, and great houses in a vocabulary that was a unique amalgam of European, American, and Caribbean elements.