The Loop in Section

Alejo Carpentier, the great Cuban novelist and musicologist, gives us a viewing lens when he writes...

"...the marvelous real begins to be unmistakeably marvelous when it arise from an unexpected alteration of reality, from a privileged revelation of reality, an unaccustomed insight that is singularly favored by the unexpected richness of reality or an amplification of the scale and categories of reality, perceived with particular intensity by virtue of an exaltation of the spirit that leads it to a kind of extreme state."

The narrative takes place in Habana, Cuba, specifically Habana Vieja, where during my stay I was given momentary access to the constructed reality that has arisen from the unique overlap of Cuba's history, politics, landscape, culture and economics. The multiplicity of this reality I believe is played out at a global scale when one senses the vastness of an economic and political system that undermine one another without entirely unraveling themselves. At a local and detail scale, the barbacoa presents itself as an organically connective architectonic that thrives behind facades dating back to the colonial era.

The barbacoa, as seen here, are informal interior constructions made by Habanans themselves with materials taken from other buildings or bought on the black market, but rarely provided by the government. Their organic growth lends them to a reading of a productive space that promotes family, but also an economic underbelly through the rental of space by non-property owners. As these structures expand they continue to tap into the electrical grid, water lines, telephone lines, etc. As a result, they have come to symbolize a condition that’s outside the codes and laws of regulated space.

The narrative resides within an expanded reflection of the model of the barbacoa, which I read as an underbelly that is both productive and connective. This reflection presents itself in the form of a mostly invisible megastructure that loops through Old Havana creating new dwelling spaces for both the existing population as well as an emerging one, while expanding, reappropriating and shoring up dilapidated parts of the city. The resulting vision is one of a parallel world where views are never totalizing, but rather episodically seen through a thickened lens.

the iterative threshold

The idea explored here is whether a threshhold, or an "in", might be established and then reestablished through a series of iterations, each building on the prior. However, it seems so much reliance on the optical poses problems for its building and reading.

exploring thresholds and program

This study consists of investigating both thresholds and the various programs (indicated by the various colors) with which they might be associated.

the opportunistic loop

As a result of UNESCO’s inscription of Old Havana onto its World Heritage List in 1982, the city has been the subject of an extensive study aimed at recovering its cultural wealth. This has led to extensive mapping and taxonomizing of buildings and public spaces with the intent of informing a strategy that allocates funding and prioritizes their use.


The loop through city intervenes with buildings in very bad condition and bad condition, in black and grey respectively. These buildings are seen as offering opportunistic spaces for their shoring up as well as productive spaces in which to position structure for new program.


A visit to Havana today would include a walk through the city, following a line under, over, around and through these opportunistic spaces.

A Reading of Borgesian Thresholds

"threshold" as defined by Merriam-Webster:

1: the plank, stone, or piece of timber that lies under a door: sill
2 a: gate, door b (1): end, boundary; specifically: the end of a runway (2): the place or point of entering or beginning: outset
3 a: the point at which a physiological or psychological effect begins to be produced b: a level, point, or value above which something is true or will take place and below which it is not or will not


Embedded in Borges’ writing are all three aspects of threshold; each one adding further complexity to the narrative. The following is an attempt to taxonomize them, starting with a reading of The Garden of Forking Paths.


The narrator, in this case Tsun, gives the following counsel to man:

“The author of an atrocious undertaking ought to imagine that he has already accomplished it, ought to impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past.”

It seems man’s free will, in this case manifest in a projection (destiny?), is the driving force behind an acting out that’s both crystallizing (“irrevocable”) and transitory (past and future). If thresholds are a point of entering, then is its inception the imagining of action afforded to us? And if they are the boundary between two territories then, in this case, are they the spaces of past and future?



The literal threshold, as a physically identifiable locus, exists in the form of a “crossroad”. On his way to find Stephen Albert, Tsun is told how he can find his house:

“The house is a long way from here, but you wont get lost if you take this road to the left and at every crossroads turn again to your left.”

In and of itself, the crossroad is not terribly interesting. However, it builds complexity serially through an accretion that adds focus at every turn, producing a threshold that’s occupiable between departure and arrival.

study models

“…I thought of a maze of mazes, of a sinuous, ever growing maze which would take in both past and future and would somehow involve the stars” -Jorge Luis Borges


In Borges’ The Garden of Forking Paths, the chronicle of events create ever expanding spatial and temporal frameworks choreographed by human choice, simultaneously engendered with the notion of multiple realities. The paths of Dr. Yu Tsun, Captain Richard Madden and Stephen Albert converge and diverge, at once writing Ts'ui Pen’s novel of infinite extensions. So while the consequence of action in one reality may terminate that path, it continues to thrive in another.

In parallel, the social, political and economic framework of contemporary Cuba, as a consequence of the communist system, has given rise to a complexity of multiple realities played out at global and local scales. These realities are acted out as survival and preservation measures without entirely unraveling the fragility of its framework. And where gaps present themselves, connective and productive constructs of a visible and invisible nature are put into play.

Calle Cuba