Tropical Assemblage: The Soviet Large Panel in Cuba
Tropical Assemblage: The Soviet Large Panel in Cuba
Palmarola and Alonso examine the confluence of science, technology, and ideology in one of the largest social housing projects in Latin America, the large-concrete-panel housing projects in Cuba. The authors demonstrate that Cuba’s imagination of revolutionary change was simultaneously local and imported, arguing that the Cuban slogan “Revolution is Building” furthered the Cuban political project and that the Cuban government’s framing of prefabricated housing paralleled its framing of the Cuban New Man. Large-panel construction, they argue, is a hybrid technology that is both Soviet and Cuban and made possible through local innovation and transnational exchange.
Keywords: architecture, prefabricated housing, local innovation, transnational exchange, Cold war, socialism, Cuba
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