Edificio del Seguro Médico, Havana

Edificio del Seguro Médico
General information
Status	Occupied
Type	Mixed use
Architectural style	Modern
Location	El Vedado
Address	23 # 201 esquina a N, El Vedado, Plaza
Town or city	Havana
Country	Cuba
Coordinates	23°08′26″N 82°22′54″W
Current tenants	Ministry of Public Health, The Prensa Latina
Named for	Edificio del Seguro Médico
Groundbreaking	1955
Estimated completion	1958
Owner	Colegio de Médicos Nacional de Cuba
Height	90 meters (300 ft)
Technical details
Structural system	Column-wall and slab
Material	Concrete, concrete block, wood, aluminum, glass
Floor count	23
Floor area	15,084 m2 (162,360 sq ft)
Lifts/elevators	3
Grounds	1,806 m2 (19,440 sq ft)+ 2,000 m2
Design and construction
Architect(s)	Antonio Quintana Simonetti, Augusto Pérez Beato, Juan Tosca Sotolongo y José Feito Mayo
Architecture firm	Quintana, Rubio y Pérez Beato
Awards and prizes	Premio Medalla de Oro del Colegio Nacional de Arquitectos. Premio anual, 1959
Known for	One of the first mixed use buildings in Havana
Other information
Number of rooms	71 apts

The Edificio del Seguro Médico in El Vedado was built between 1955 and 1958, designed as a mixed use building for apartments and offices for the headquarters of the National Medical Insurance Company, it is considered to be the best commercial architectural work of the 50s. Today it houses the Cuban Ministry of Public Health and the Prensa Latina Agency. The only complete package of information about the building is the slides that were presented for the architectural contest, collected in the magazine 'Arquitectura', nº 269, of 1955 published by the College of Architects of Havana.

History

The project arose as a result of a public architectural competition held in 1955 for the new headquarters of the Cuban Colegio de Médicos (National Medical Association) and the offices of the Medical Insurance Company. Given the high cost of the site, the complexity of the initial project was increased by the need to add rental income from apartments that would help to make the building profitable. Antonio Quintana's proposal was the winner since it managed to solve the complexity of the program with two volumes: a box for administrative offices, an auditorium, and lobbies establishing a visual dialogue between the two and generating guidelines for the new emerging mosernists typologies in the city.

Program

Residential lobby entrance from Calle N, mural by Mariano Rodriguez

Garden_Sixth Floor. Drawing by Quintana

The first mixed-use building in the city was the Radiocentro CMQ Building, also on La Rampa (Calle 23}, by the architect Martín Domínguez Esteban who also designed the FOCSA Building. The Edificio del Seguro Médico is one of the earliest mixed-use buildings (commercial/residential) in Havana. Similar to the Lever House in Manhattan, Antonio Quintana Simonetti (1919–1943) sets up a typological relationship of two volumes of dissimilar proportion: a box at the lower level containing the Seguro Médico offices and an eighteen story residential block. Similar to the FOCSA Building, the residential slab is located over a roof of the Seguro Madico Offices; a large plane which is converted into a children's playground (garden) as shown in the Quintana sketch for that area.

Architecture

Edificio del Seguro Médico. Residential Block Plan

Drawing of one of the 3.13 meters (10'-3") wide living rooms by Antonio Quintana

Residential module

The residential block has an architectural module of 9.40 meters (30'-10") by 3.40 meters (11'-1.86"). This 9.40 dimension is expressed on the north-east elevation of the office block. The outboard balconies ]are of different color and alternate position on every floor. The lower volume occupied today by the Ministry of Public Health, and perhaps anticipating the work of Robert Venturi in the ISI Building at 3501 Market Street near the Penn campus, has a totally flush facade on the north-east side of the building so no shadows' from the window frames of the concrete structure of the building, for instance, register on the facade.

The 3.40 metres (11.2 ft) width of the rooms is further subdivided into three sections of 1.13 metres (3 ft 8 in) and this module determines the width of doors, windows and passages between rooms within the apartment. The wooden windows have two sets of nine movable slats that can be independently controlled to modulate the natural light in the room, they can be completely closed to make the room totally dark, even in bright days. The pattern of the windows and door and the bearing walls (9.40 meters apart) are expressed on the Calle N elevation.

Walls & floors

The interior walls are eleven concrete blocks high plus a base (2,352 millimetres (92.6 in)), they divide the apartments and rooms, are unpainted and are set in common, gray mortar, the wall sits on top of a black 152 millimetres (6.0 in) terrazzo baseboard. Several of the doors in the apartment, the bathroom doors for instance, have fixed louvers between the space from the top of the door to the ceiling, some of the doors have a 320 millimetres (13 in) fixed panel of glass over them Instead of the ventilation slats. The structural walls are of reinforced concrete.

To both sides of elevators, there is a 12.65 meter long rear wall for each of the apartments; this wall is divided horizontally into three parts: 1-Two prefab concrete panels of 6.32 m or 9.48 m in length depending on the configuration of the floor. 2- Located under the kitchen cabinets, a strip window of equal length and in the middle ot the two concrete panels. The window has wooden "persianas" (venetian blinds) that were widely used in modern and traditional residential buildings in Havana such as the FOCSA Building and the López Serrano Building. 3- The exterior wall of the public corridor, made of floor to ceiling concrete blocks and set in such a way that allows for 8" X 8" openings throughout so that the exterior wall of the semi-public corridor is partially open to the elements. The concrete block wall is either 6.32 or 3.17 meters long. The the wall enclosing the vestibule in front of the elevators is made of an aluminum frame for glass panel inserts with operable windows.

All of the floors in the residential tower, including in the apartments, the balconies and the pubic areas, were originally of black terrazzo. The balconies also have a six inch terrazzo baseboard and two incandescent lights located in the ceiling of the balcony above. The front railing of the outboard balconies are concrete made by the upturned floor slab, the two side railings are metal.

Ventilation. light

The walls of the building as thin as they are, supported on each floor by the edge of the slab, often have the triple task of keeping noise and modulating the natural light as well as making always available the passage of air.

Murals

The building's main entrance vestibule on La Rampa has a black and white tesserae mural by Wifredo Lam entitled "Abstracción." The residential lobby on Calle N has "Boomerang," a mural by Mariano Rodriguez.

Gold medal

The Edificio del Seguro Médico was awarded First Prize at the Architecture Competition in 1954 and a Gold Medal by the School of Architects in Havana in 1959..

Structure

Structural Plan. Residential block

Curtain wall

The residential block is supported by four bearing walls thus allowing for curtain wall construction. The structural module of 9.40 meters by 10.30 meters. The 9.40-meter dimension between walls is further subdivided into three modules of 3.13 meters ( 10'-3"), and this is the architectural dimension we saw previously of all the bedrooms and living rooms. There are eleven 3.15 meter subdivisions in total which make up the one bedroom (6.30 meters) and two bedrooms (9.40 meters) apartments. The outermost 3.13 meters of slab at either end, and on each floor, shown hatched on the structural plan diagram, is cantilevered and that is how Quintana achieves the thin walls at the ends of the apartment block (on the NE elevation), these walls only carry their own weight. They are the same thickness as the floor slabs. All outboard balconies are 5.34 meters long, all non servrice rooms have access to balconies. The two basic floor plans of apartments alternate between the eighth floor and the twenty-third floor. The apartments on the seventh floor (the 1,449 sq m roof of the office block) had private gardens, the end wall of the residential block are missing and the residential block appears to float. (N.E. elevation). Unfortunately, the tenant of this apartment have added rooms so this subtle modernist detail has been lost. These three units and their private gardens overlooking Calle 23 were confiscated early in 1960, the whole rood was made into a children's playground but this project eventually close.

Office module

The 34.50 X 42 meter open floor plan (1,449 sq m) of the offices below the residential block (ground, second-floor plans) has a structural module of columns that is 9.4m x 8.4m on center and accommodates stairs of various dimensions, elevators, ramps, toilets and an auditorium. The 9.40 meter distance of the bearing walls of the residential slab above is positioned over the office block in such a way that the two innermost structural walls are carried down to the foundation of the building while the two outermost walls are supported by two columns each (below the sixth floor) as can be seen on the ground-floor and second-floor plans.

Gallery

• Edificio del Seguro Médico plans, elevations and sketches
• 
  View from the north-east, La Rampa.
• 
  NE Elevation.
• 
  La Rampa elevation.
• 
  Ground floor plan.
• 
  Second floor plan.
• 
  Sixth floor plan.
• 
  Commercial building entrance on La Rampa. Drawing by Quintana.
• 
  Auditorium. Drawing by Quintana.

External links

Download: La Habana: guía de arquitectura

Seguro Medico_Ivan Petkov Ivanov

Category talk:20th century in Cuba Category talk:20th century in Havana Category talk:1958 in Cuba Category talk:1950s in Cuba