Vittorio Garatti

Fundraising initiatives have since been proposed to help with the restoration and the preservation of the project. In November 2012 international press announced a project of restoration and re-use of the Havana Escuelas Nacional de Arte complex put forward by Cuban ballet superstar Carlos Acosta. According to the BBC, Acosta planned "to create a new model of [ballet] school... that would be financially self-sustaining, run as a non-profit-making charity". According to the article, however, the project was stalled because of the opposition of Vittorio Garatti, who "is protesting that he has been sidelined. He has written to Cuba's Communist leaders claiming that Acosta wants to 'appropriate' and 'privatase' his building" (S. Rainsford, "Carlos Acosta's Cuban ballet school dream", BBC News, 18 November 2012).

In 2011, the documentary Unfinished Spaces, produced and directed by Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray, was released. Vittorio Garatti attended the film festival premieres in Los Angeles and Havana. The film won a Film Independent Spirit Award, the Society of Architectural Historians Film and Video Award, and was released on PBS, HBO Latin America, Al-Jazeera English, iTunes, and Netflix.

The case of the unfinished project of the Escuelas began to emerge in 1999 with the publication, of the first edition of the book Revolution of Forms - Cuba's Forgotten Art Schools by John A. Loomis, architect and professor at the City College of New York. On 28 February 2003 the site was included on the Tentative List of World Heritage Sites by UNESCO, in the category of cultural heritage. These events gave to the abandoned architectural complex a renewed interest.

As a result of a changed cultural climate and ideological, Vittorio Garatti ended up being viewed with suspicion and went under arrest for twenty days, in June 1974 on charges of spying. In that same year he was forced to leave the country by force.

The School of Arts' good consideration underwent on an ideological disgrace as a consequence of a different political and cultural mindset that considered the utopian architecture politically incorrect when compared to the Soviet building style that was acquiring dominance in the island. In 1965 the whole complex was abandoned, fell into ruins, and part of the materials were removed to be reused in other construction.

In 1962 he realized the Escuela Andre Voisin in Guines, while in 1966-67, with Sergio Baroni and Hugo d'Acosta, he designed the Cuban pavilion at the Expo 1967 in Montreal. Over the years 1968/70, with Max Vaquero, Eusebio Azcue, and urban planner Jean-Pierre Garnier, he supervised the development plan of the capital.

Following the victory of the Cuban Revolution, Cuban-born architect (and Banco Obrero participant) Ricardo Porro invited Garatti and Roberto Gottardi to join him in Havana in early 1961. Garatti soon began work with Porro and Gottardi on the ambitious project of Havana's new National Art Schools, commissioned by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, in the context of the educational policy promoted immediately after the revolution. The architectural complex was to be built in the most exclusive upper-class Cuban district, the Country Club. The intention was to create a cultural center of extraordinary dimension, opened to the developing countries of three continents, just 90 miles from the symbol of American imperialism.

He graduated in architecture in 1957 from the Politecnico di Milano, where Ernesto Nathan Rogers was a major influence. Guido Canella and Gae Aulenti were his classmates.

Vittorio Garatti (born 1927 in Italy) is an Italian architect.