FOCSA Building

The FOCSA Building aerial view from the west.

The building is located on a site bordered by Calles 17 and M and Calles 19 and N in the Vedado.[3][1] In 1952 the CMQ Radio and TV Network located at Calle Rampa and M in el Vedado planned to provide administrative offices, a radio station and housing for employees. CMQ selected a 110,000 sq. ft. plot of land costing approximately[lower-alpha 1] 700,000 pesos.[2] The company Fomento de Hipotecas Aseguradas (FHA) financed 80% of the cost of the residences and 60% of the commercial shops. El Banco Continental Cubano granted a credit of 6 million pesos.[3]

Work began in February 1954 and finished in June 1956. At the time of construction it was the second-largest residential concrete building in the world, second only to the Martinelli Building in São Paulo, Brazil. It surpassed the López Serrano Building in height which had been Cuba's tallest building.

In the early 1960s, middle-class owners of residential floor units had their properties nationalized by the current government. In the 1970s the building housed Soviet and Eastern bloc specialists and advisors and the ground store supermarket was for non-Cubans only. In 2000 an elevator cable snapped killing one person. In the 2000s the building was repainted and renovated and much of the building was given over to temporary housing of foreign guest workers, primarily from Venezuela.

Section-diagram showing programmatic distribution

The FOCSA has 39 floors 4 of which are dedicated to commercial use, two floors are for parking. Twenty-eight floors have thirteen residences each. The thirty-fourth floor has six penthouses on a plinth made possible by the structural walls which stop below this floor. Each penthouse is the size of two apartments (A+B, C+D, E+F, etc.). The penthouses have a dedicated elevator and patio-courtyards open to the sky. All apartment floors are terrazzo on cinders.[1]

The site may be divided into three parts: 1- A shallow, mixed-use “wall and slab” Y of 35 floors above a base. 2- The podium of outdoor amenities including two swimming pools and a club for guests and tenants. The podium covers the entire site. 3- Four floors of building services, commercial spaces, and parking for 500 cars located below the podium[4][1]

Tenant corridor. Showing center bearing wall, entrance to center apartments F and G on 14th and 15th floors. Original signage.

The FOCSA rises to a height of 402' above the footings; 11" bearing walls separate the apartments and in turn support the 6-3/4" reinforced concrete slabs at each level. The bearing walls are solid and have no openings except at the basement and lobby floors to facilitate access between rooms.[1] There is an additional concrete mass at the center of the Y, (apartments F and G), to increase resistance to lateral forces. The walls extend through the rear wall to support the corridors. The wall and slab structural system form a three-dimensional lattice resisting horizontal forces. A high strength concrete mix from 3,000 to 7,000 psi. was used.[1] The tower and corridors show prefabricated panels on the exterior. Reinforced concrete columns support the podium and the stories below. The residential block, the 'Y,' is supported by thirteen eleven-inch walls.[3]

The building was chosen in February 1997 by the Unión Nacional de Arquitectos e Ingenieros de la Construcción de Cuba (UNAICC) as one of the seven wonders of Cuban civil engineering.[4]

1/2 level

Tenant corridor to apartments.

Apartments are a one-half level up or down from the service and tenant corridors. A typical floor contains 13 apartments, five have two bedrooms and a maid's room. The cost of the apartments was $21,500 for the larger units in the center and $17,500 for the smaller ones. It was stipulated that an additional $30 per each floor was charged the higher up in the building the unit was located, the highest apartments were the first to be sold.[3]

Located in the tower, are the building's four tenant and two service elevators and two sets of stairs. One of the service elevators is dedicated to the restaurant and the observation floor. The other service elevator is for the apartments and is linked to the service corridors. The tower also contains offices on the 37th floor for the restaurant, “La Torre,” on the 38th floor and an observation room on the 39th floor.[4]

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  Typical floor plan. Stairs from the tenant corridor. Service stairs shown below.
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  Entrance to apartment half a floor down from corridor.
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  Apartments located one-half floor up or down from corridors.
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  Typical apartment showing service and tenant stairs to two different levels of two corridors.[lower-alpha 2]

The podium contains a clubhouse, and offices and swimming pools for adults and children. It has gardens, lighted paths, and benches. There is a ramp to the street located at the corner of 19th and M, the podium was used as a staging area during the construction of the project.[4] Below the podium at the fourth level are building offices.[1]

Calles M and 17, FOCSA building entrance.

Marked by a two-lane covered Porte-cochѐre at street level is the building's entrance. Inside is the building desk, a large waiting area, and the tenant elevator lobby. The restaurant “El Emperador” and a supermarket a bank, post office, theaters, and two radio stations are also on the ground floor. (COCO and Radio Metropolitana)[5] Various cafes situated around the perimeter of the site along a double-loaded corridor traversing the site from Calle M to N. Light filters to the interior corridor from openings in the podium.[4] On the second floor (green in section diagram) is the administrative offices for the building.

The 20 in (510 mm) separation of the floating corridors allows for cross ventilation of the apartments and views to the west. The dropped ceiling over the bathrooms and maid's room allow for natural ventilation to flow through the apartments.[1] [lower-alpha 3] Closet doors have vent grilles on their tops and bottoms to allow for air circulation.

Roof showing patio openings to the sky.

Most apartments in the FOCSA Building have a "patio," a room with access to water that is located next to the kitchen with a dedicated service entrance and connected to the service corridor. The Penthouse units have a patio opened to the sky.

A penthouse in the FOCSA Building was used as the apartment of the protagonist Sergio Carmona Mendoyo, played by Sergio Corrieri, in the film Memories of Underdevelopment, a 1968 film written and directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea.[6] Sergio, a wealthy bourgeois aspiring writer, decides to stay in Cuba even though his wife and friends flee to Miami. Sergio looks back over the changes in Cuba, from the Cuban Revolution to the missile crisis, the effect of living in an underdeveloped country, and his relations with his girlfriends Elena and Hanna. Memories of Underdevelopment is a complex character study of alienation during the turmoil of social changes. The film is told in a highly subjective point of view through a fragmented narrative that resembles the way memories function. Throughout the film, Sergio narrates the action, and at times is used as a tool to present bits of political information about the climate in Cuba at the time. In several instances, real-life documentary footage of protests and political events are incorporated into the film and played over Sergio's narration to expose the audience to the reality of the Revolution. The timeframe of the film is somewhat ambiguous, but it appears to take place over a few months.[7]

Because of the political turmoil between the US and Cuba at the time, the US government denied Alea a visitor's visa in 1970 when he attempted to enter the US to receive several awards he had won for Memories of Underdevelopment, using the Trading with the Enemy Act as justification.[8] Sergio's apartment in the film was a penthouse on the south side of the FOCSA Building.[9]

• Edificio del Seguro Médico, Havana
• López Serrano Building
• Radiocentro CMQ Building
• Malecón, Havana
• Monument to the Victims of the USS Maine (Havana)

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  Roof showing penthouse courtyard openings.
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  Tower exterior showing prefabricated concrete panels and change in level.
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  Rear service stairs to tower apartments.
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  Service floor. Service elevators & stairs to tower apartments.
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  Tower detail showing north corner windows, prefabricated concrete panels, and change in level.
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  Detail of original signage.
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  Apartment up to tenant corridor, the window below between corridors.
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  Window between corridors in stair down from the apartment to the service corridor.
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  Window between corridors at tenant stair.
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  Tenant elevator lobby, tower apartment stairs.

Martín Domínguez Esteban

La sombra del arquitecto Martín Domínguez Esteban

Havana skyline from Havana Hilton

Exploring Havana: The tallest building in Cuba, El Focsa.

FOCSA

Derek Malcolm of the Guardian places "Memorias del Subdesarrollo" at number 54 in his 100 greatest movies

Memories of Underdevelopment: Imaging History an essay by Joshua Jelly-Schapiro at the Criterion Collection

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