Revolutionary Architecture: How Cuba's National Arts Schools Were Disgraced and Reclaimed

The Cuban Revolution had barely finished when Fidel Castro and Che Guevara staged one of the iconic moments of post-Batista Cuba. Dressed in green fatigues and black combat boots, the two commandantes hit the links. Mugging for photographers, they goofed around on a golf course in the posh Havana suburb of Cubanacán. "Castro Tries Sport of the Idle Rich," ran the front page headline in the New York Times.

It was at that moment, apparently, that Castro decided to turn the symbol of privilege into one of the first significant architectural projects of the new regime. The golf course would become the campus of the Cuban National Arts Schools. The appropriation hinted at the possibilities of what a communist government might accomplish. The transformation seemed to embody all the promise of the revolution.