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Looks at portrayals of Havana in literature, music, and the visual arts in the post-Soviet era, as the city is reinvented as a destination for international tourists and business ventures.
In 1994 Cuba, Usnavy begins to question his loyalty to the Cuban government as his family falls apart amidst rising poverty and he learns a family secret behind his one prize: a Tiffany lamp given to him by his mother.
A devastated capital like Havana has been left to ruin as a result of the 1951 Revolution. The thesis looks at one of the city's theater ruins, the Campoamor Theater, as a site condition. The restoration of the building and its original program, as well as the injection of new programs will provide Havana with a new civic space. While considering the tension and overlapping nostalgias attached to the site, the proposal represents a specific attitude towards dealing with the ruination of an entire city. It is an attempt to manifest hope and allow people to confront and heal from their wounds but plan for a societal renewal.
“[A] superb collection . . . The 18 stories by current and former residents of Havana are gritty, heartbreaking and capture the city.” —Orlando Sentinel To most outsiders, Havana is a tropical sin city. Habaneros know that this is neither new nor particularly true. In the real Havana—the lawless Havana that never appears in the postcards or tourist guides—the concept of sin has been banished by the urgency of need. And need—aching and hungry—inevitably turns the human heart darker, feral, and criminal. In this Havana, crime, though officially vanquished by revolutionary decree, is both wistfully quotidian and personally vicious. In the stories of Havana Noir, current and former residents of the city—some international sensations such as Leonardo Padura, others exciting new voices like Yohamna Depestre—uncover crimes of violence and loveless sex, of mental cruelty and greed, of self-preservation and collective hysteria. Other authors include: Pablo Medina, Alex Abella, Arturo Arango, Lea Aschkenas, Moisés Asís, Arnaldo Correa, Mabel Cuesta, Michel Encinosa Fú, Mylene Fernández Pintado, Carolina García-Aguilera, Miguel Mejides, Achy Obejas, Oscar F. Ortíz, Ena Lucía Portela, Mariela Varona Roque, and Yoss. “[A] remarkable collection . . . gritty tales of deprivation, depravity, heroic perseverance, revolution and longing in a city mythical and widely misunderstood.” —The Miami Herald
Encountering the City provides a new and sustained engagement with the concept of encounter. Drawing on cutting-edge theoretical work, classic writings on the city and rich empirical examples, this volume demonstrates why encounters are significant to urban studies, politically, philosophically and analytically. Bringing together a range of interests, from urban multiculture, systems of economic regulation, security and suspicion, to more-than-human geographies, soundscapes and spiritual experience, Encountering the City argues for a more nuanced understanding of how the concept of 'encounter' is used. This interdisciplinary collection thus provides an insight into how scholars' writing on and in the city mobilise, theorise and challenge the concept of encounter through empirical cases taken from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America. These cases go beyond conventional accounts of urban conviviality, to demonstrate how encounters destabilise, rework and produce difference, fold together complex temporalities, materialise power and transform political relations. In doing so, the collection retains a critical eye on the forms of regulation, containment and inequality that shape the taking place of urban encounter. Encountering the City is a valuable resource for students and researchers alike.
A true believer is faced with a choice between love for his family and the Cuban Revolution. “Daring, tough, and deeply compassionate, Achy Obejas’s Ruins is a breathtaker. Obejas writes like an angel, which is to say: gloriously . . . one of Cuba’s most important writers.” —Junot Díaz, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction “[An] honest and superbly written book.” —Miami Herald Usnavy has always been a true believer. When the Cuban Revolution triumphed in 1959, he was just a young man and eagerly signed on for all of its promises. But as the years have passed, the sacrifices have outweighed the glories and he’s become increasingly isolated in his revolutionary zeal. His friends openly mock him, his wife dreams of owning a car totally outside their reach, and his beloved fourteen-year-old daughter haunts the coast of Havana, staring north. In the summer of 1994, a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the government allows Cubans to leave at will and on whatever will float. More than 100,000 flee—including Usnavy’s best friend. Things seem to brighten when he stumbles across what may or may not be a priceless Tiffany lamp that reveals a lost family secret and fuels his long repressed feelings . . . But now Usnavy is faced with a choice between love for his family and the Revolution that has shaped his entire life.
MIT American tourism influx is inevitable in the rapidly 'capitalizing' political context of Cuba. From the 1920's through the 1950's Americans were the dominate tourist on the island. Fast forward to today and Americans account for only about 5% of all visitors. But, this is all about to change. An additional one million American tourists are projected to invade Cuba within the first year the travel ban is lifted. Cuba receives around 2.5 million visitors annually, so this American influx represents a 40% increase in one year. How does a city deal with this type of boom, especially one as unique as Havana? This thesis investigates prototypes for reconstructing both Cubano and tourist habitation in Centro Habana. A combination of Marxist ideals, morbid economy and trade embargo have torn the urban fabric and bUilding stock. Ruin and decay thrive in the Caribbean Metropolis. Roughly 60% of Centro Havana's bUildings are in deplorable condition, and it is said that a bUilding collapses every 3 days. This has created a serious housing shortage as well as an opportunity for future tourism growth. Sites of decay become the vessels for prototypical exploration and thus create a new urban experience for both locals and future tourists. This prototypical approach is applied in 2 key areas, new accommodation typologies as well as experimental reuse of bUilding materials. Notions of how to inhabit the cities decay and blights translate into new typologies of hotels, hostels and micro-hotels. Excess construction debris, prolific in the city today, becomes repurposed as a new medium for material systems. This reuse of brick translates into facade, screen and surface systems that compose a new regenerative typology for Havana.
Once symbols of the past, ruins have become ubiquitous signs of our future. Americans today encounter ruins in the media on a daily basis--images of abandoned factories and malls, toxic landscapes, devastating fires, hurricanes, and floods. In this sweeping study, Miles Orvell offers a new understanding of the spectacle of ruins in US culture, exploring how photographers, writers, painters, and filmmakers have responded to ruin and destruction, both real and imaginary, in an effort to make sense of the past and envision the future. Empire of Ruins explains why Americans in the nineteenth century yearned for the ruins of Rome and Egypt and how they portrayed a past as ancient and mysterious in the remains of Native American cultures. As the romance of ruins gave way to twentieth-century capitalism, older structures were demolished to make way for grander ones, a process interpreted by artists as a symptom of America's "creative destruction." In the late twentieth century, Americans began to inhabit a perpetual state of ruins, made visible by photographs of decaying inner cities, derelict factories and malls, and the waste lands of the mining industry. This interdisciplinary work focuses on how visual media have transformed disaster and decay into spectacles that compel our moral attention even as they balance horror and beauty. Looking to the future, Orvell considers the visual portrayal of climate ruins as we face the political and ethical responsibilities of our changing world. A wide-ranging work by an acclaimed urban, cultural, and photography scholar, Empire of Ruins offers a provocative and lavishly illustrated look at the American past, present, and future.
This book highlights the ruin's prolific resurgence in Latin American cultural life at the turn of the millennium and sharply reveals a stirring creative drive by artists and intellectuals toward ethical reflection and change in the midst of ruinous devastation.
For more than thirty years, musician Carlos Varela has been a guide to the heart, soul, and sound of Havana. My Havana is a lyrical exploration of Varela's life and work, and of the vibrant musical, literary, and cinematic culture of his generation.