Concrete Conservation Workshop

In November 2025, Friends of Havana organized a technical workshop on the conservation of modern concrete architecture in Cuba. The workshop, held at the Colegio de Santa Clara in Havana, was organized in collaboration with the Office of the Historian of the City of Havana (OHCH) and CONCRETO Academy, bringing together Cuban architects, engineers, and preservation specialists with international experts.

The workshop grew directly out of the Hablemos de Arquitectura Moderna symposium held in Havana in March 2024. That meeting highlighted the extraordinary importance of Cuba’s modern architectural heritage while also identifying a critical need: stronger technical capacity to diagnose and conserve the concrete structures that define much of Havana’s twentieth-century architecture. The 2025 workshop was conceived as a practical response to that challenge.

Participants focused on the Chapel of Santa María del Mar, a significant modernist structure in Havana del Este, using the building as a case study for hands-on training. The program combined lectures with fieldwork, diagnostic testing, and collaborative analysis. Participants documented existing conditions, examined patterns of deterioration, and developed preliminary conservation strategies.

The workshop addressed a pressing regional problem. Across the Caribbean, modern concrete buildings face increasing deterioration due to tropical weather, salt air, and decades of limited maintenance. While Havana possesses one of the most important collections of modern architecture in Latin America, many of these structures are now at risk. Strengthening technical knowledge and conservation practice is therefore essential.

By bringing together Cuban professionals and international specialists, the workshop created a setting for practical knowledge exchange while producing useful documentation for future restoration work. For Friends of Havana, the program represented an important next step after the Hablemos symposium—moving from raising awareness about modern architecture to building the technical skills needed to preserve it.