Fernando Salinas González-Mendive

He experimented with the social use of prefabrication in the solution of rural housing.

He graduated from the Faculty of Architecture at the University of La Habana in 1955. Until the end of the decade he worked with his colleague Raúl González Romero. Works from that period are the residential house on 1a and 60 streets, from 1956, and the house of Higinio Miguel (1958), both in Miramar, in which the architect's will to search is evident in the elaboration of constructive details, in metal pieces, in carpentry, in the proposal of furniture, in the filtering of exterior light through filters and chromatic screens, in the expression of materials and in the intimacy of interior spaces.

During that time he also worked in the United States alongside Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe and Phillip Johnson, two great masters of the modern movement, and similarly received influences from Frank Lloyd Wright.

From 1959 onwards he had different responsibilities. He was director of the Design Department of the Faculty of Architecture of La Habana, at the José Antonio Echeverría University City (CUJAE) —current José Antonio Echeverría Higher Polytechnic Institute (ISPJAE). He also directed the Department of Plastic Arts of the Ministry of Culture, and served as advisor and ministerial counselor from 1980 to 1992.

Fernando Salinas was a relevant figure within the group of architects who produced innovations in the Cuban Revolution. According to his own words: "politics becomes conscious culture in true art: when the artistic becomes everyday for everyone, that is the revolution," and this way of thinking extended throughout his entire work.

He wrote articles in which he poured out his advanced ideas, such as "The Revolutionary Architecture of the Third World," in which he revealed the guidelines he followed in the projects he carried out: "From the general determinants, some principles can be derived that define the form of new architecture: the central principle of economy, of change, of growth, of transformation, of economic maintenance and that of flexibility."

Salinas put this principle into practice in the project of prefabricated residential buildings that he carried out in Tallapiedra, in the city of La Habana, in 1960, and in the Las Campanas neighborhood, in Manicaragua, —former province of Las Villas— in 1962.

He took the first experimental steps in prefabrication in the Department of Technical Research of the Ministry of Construction (MICONS). The aforementioned project, which served as a model for the future standardization plans that he undertook, addressed an objective need: to house a group of technicians from a factory. The residential complex constituted an urbanization developed around an axial thoroughfare. The architectural project aimed to achieve simplicity and maximum flexibility in the interior of the apartments, using transparent partitions with slats and blind panels that alternate along the exterior surface, which also helped achieve visibility for the landscape surrounding the complex.

The theme of progressive housing with flexible high technology, which Salinas worked on during the 1960s, culminated with the experimental multiflex module, used in the Abel Santamaría neighborhood, in the city of La Habana. In 1964 he built military facilities in El Calvario, in the same city, with great Wrightian influence.

Later he assumed direction of the José Antonio Echeverría University City (CUJAE) project, following Humberto Alonso's departure, its previous designer. The technology used in its execution was advanced, with the lift-slab construction system and light siporex panels, which allowed for an open framework, linked by a system of bridges and galleries that connected the buildings to each other. Interior courtyards and green areas provide flexibility to the complex.

Another Salinas project was the building of the Cuban embassy in Mexico (1977). In it he inquired once again into Cubanía, which he expressed symbolically in the construction, and integrated plastic works by artists such as Mariano Rodríguez and Luis Martínez Pedro to express images of Cuba, its landscape and color, the sea and the visual context of revolutionary society. In the building, symbolic significance is relevant, transmitted not only through architectural forms, but also through plastic works.

In 1978 he built a monument to the Cuban national hero, José Martí, in Cancún, in collaboration with poet Roberto Fernández Retamar and sculptor José Delarra.

In 1985 he was president of the jury that selected the winning project for the Mariana Grajales Plaza, in Guantánamo, in a national competition sponsored by the Provincial Culture Office of Guantánamo and the Commission for the Development of Monumental and Environmental Sculpture of the Ministry of Culture.

In 1987 he worked again alongside Delarra in the Antonio Maceo Memorial project, in El Cacahual, southwest of La Habana. This complex forms a significant open system properly integrated into the rural environment.

In 1990 he assumed direction of the Department of Environmental Design of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC), where he worked until his death, which occurred in La Habana on August 25, 1992.

Fernando Salinas was winner of various competitions from the International Union of Architects. In 1961 he won an award at the VI Biennial Art of Sao Paulo, with a project for a Primary and Secondary Education Center. In 1969, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, his project for the La Demajagua Neighborhood Unit was awarded. In 1975, in Madrid, his work "Viet Nam and the Community of Emergency" was awarded, in which he proposed a set of transformable progressive housing for the My Lai area, destroyed by war. In 1978, in Mexico, he received recognition for the applied project Design of Political-Administrative Installation System for the People's Power of Cuba.

In addition to distinctions conferred by the State and Cuban institutions, he received the Friedrich Schinkel Order from Germany and the BAQ'92 Award (Architect of the Americas) from the Union of Architects of Brazil. He was posthumously conferred by the José Antonio Echeverría Higher Polytechnic Institute the title of Professor of Professors.