NZ Visual Diary - Old Havana

market cart - Old Havana

I found the architecture of Old Havana ornate and heavy, an opulence contained within compressed dimensions. Buildings were often worn and crumbled, but the architecture was always defiant, insistent that the onlooker imagine a grander past within the context of built environment.

And yet, I fervently await a future Cuba, one that rebuilds within a vernacular that retains an echo of its colonial past but demonstrably embraces an Afro-Caribbean heritage as well as the complex cosmopolitan dialects of the 21st century.

Everywhere, vibrant and audacious colour was a bright beacon illuminating that past and prefiguring in provocative proposition a bold future.