Christina Klausmann, 2022

200 Schools on Two Years. Socialist School Construction by Matilde Ponce Copado and Alberto Robaina (in German)

The Cuban Revolution in the 1950s fundamentally changed the country in all areas of life. This also applied to architecture and urban planning, as they were to make their contribution to the socialist revolution. In doing so, architecture and urban planning were to fulfill two requirements of the revolutionary leadership in particular: First, there should be a building industry that develops projects for the benefit of Cuban society as a whole, rather than constructing individual buildings for a privileged few. And second, the built environment should contribute to identification with socialism.

An important goal of the new political leadership was the literacy of the population. Education should be free and accessible to all citizens. The architects Matilde Ponce Copado and Alberto Robaina contributed significantly to this development by planning new rural elementary schools. They developed a type of building that was easily expandable due to its hexagonal and geometric shape. A total of 200 such schools were supposed to be built throughout the island in order to make education accessible, primarily to the rural population.