El Fanguito

In 2024, Friends of Havana supported a placemaking initiative in El Fanguito, one of Havana’s most underserved neighborhoods, in collaboration with the place-making group Our City Our Space and architects Ad Urbis. The project focused on improving public space through a participatory process that brought together local residents, community leaders, and independent architects to identify needs, develop ideas, and build small but meaningful interventions.

The work was rooted in a simple premise: that even in highly marginalized urban areas, carefully designed, low-cost interventions can help create more welcoming and dynamic public spaces. Through workshops and collective action on site, the project used a bottom-up approach to strengthen local ownership and encourage residents to take part in shaping their own neighborhood environment.

Several interventions were developed as part of the initiative. These included a mural on the underside of an urban staircase, a shaded gathering area built from recycled materials, a children’s play area made with repurposed tires, and an open-air museum featuring murals connected to local history and gender violence. Together, these elements helped transform overlooked spaces into places of play, reflection, and community gathering.

For Friends of Havana, the El Fanguito initiative was important not only for its physical results but also for its process. The project demonstrated how public space improvements can emerge from close collaboration with residents and how modest, tactical interventions can generate visibility, participation, and hope in neighborhoods that are often excluded from formal planning processes.

More broadly, the initiative reflects FoH’s belief that improving Havana’s future depends not only on major plans and institutions, but also on supporting community-driven projects that strengthen everyday urban life.