In the wake of the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro gained power on
January 1 1959. The subsequent American embargo on Cuba intensified pressure on
the Castro administration to acquire other economic partners. A trade agreement
for Cuban sugar in return for Soviet fuel initiated trade relations between the
two nations, which would be predominant in Cuba's agenda. The USSR would
cooperate with the socialist republic during the Cuban missile crisis. The
partnership was instrumental in sharing a specific type of building system as
well. In 1963, Hurricane Flora triggered devastation and displaced thousands.
The Soviet Union by means of their massive standardized building capacity bequeathed
a factory, expertise and a building system, the I-464 large concrete panel
system, in order to help the rebuilding process.
Cuban engineers and designers assumed the panel system's tweaking to
local climatic conditions. The I-464 also known in the USSR as the KPD, large
panel system, was a variation of the French CAMUS method patented by Raymond
Camus in 1948. Retained in the vast «campaign for 4000 dwellings» (loosely
translated from French) the scheme employed concrete panes as the basis of simple
slab and wall platform construction. Along with the Camus building process, the
USSR had inherited this type of building normalization during the 1930s with
the Soviet chapter of Ernst May’s urbanization missions.
Although snow loads are substantially different in Cuba, the large panel
heavy prefab system followed a similar pattern of development. The concrete
panels’ thickness varied between 150mm and 300mm and obeyed a modular grid of 8m
x 3m. Variations included insulated sandwich panels or panels cast with
different textures according to the panels' function. Cast over steel
reinforcement, panels were connected with a cast-on-site joint.
The exchange of building culture from The USSR to Cuba constituted a gracious
exchange but also elevated government adversaries who perceived the aid as underwriting
soviet financed districts. A decade later in an attempt to broaden the use of
this modern building method, Cuba's adaptation of the Camus system was sent to
Chile. The large concrete panel as an open variable building method endured and
insured the open exchange of a type of socialist building culture.
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| I-464 large concrete panel building system |
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