FOCSA Building
General information
Type	Residential
Architectural style	Modern
Location	El Vedado
Address	17 y M
Town or city	Havana
Country	Cuba
Coordinates	23°08′34.4″N 82°23′02.7″W / 23.142889°N 82.384083°W / 23.142889; -82.384083
Construction started	February 1954
Completed	June 1956
Cost	7,000,000 pesos
Owner	CMQ Radio TV Network
Height	121 meters (397 ft)
Technical details
Structural system	Wall and slab
Material	7000 PSI concrete[1]
Size	11" wall, 6.75" slab
Floor count	39
Floor area	830,000 square feet (77,000 m2) (res)
Lifts/elevators	4 tenant + 2 service
Grounds	110,000 square feet (10,000 m2)
Design and construction
Architect(s)	Martín Domínguez Esteban, Ernesto Gómez Sampera
Developer	FOCSA
Engineer	Sáenz, Cancio & Martín
Structural engineer	Luis Sáenz Duplace
Services engineer	Gustavo Becquer, mechanical Fernando H.Meneses, electrical
Civil engineer	Bartolome Bestard and Manuel Padron
Other information
Number of rooms	374 apartments
Parking	500 cars
Website
focsa.com

The FOCSA Building was built from 1954 to 1956,^[2] and named after the contracting company Fomento de Obras y Construcciones, Sociedad Anónima. The FOCSA Building is 121 metres (394 feet) tall and located in the Vedado section of Havana.^[1] The structural engineer was Luis Sáenz Duplace, professor of engineering at the University of Havana and of the firm Sáenz, Cancio & Martín. The architects were Ernesto Gómez Sampera (1921–2004) , Mercedes Diaz (his wife), and Martín Domínguez Esteban (1897-1970) who was the architect of the Radiocentro CMQ Building. The civil engineers were Bartolome Bestard and Manuel Padron. Gustavo Becquer and Fernando H.Meneses were the mechanical and electrical engineers respectively.^[1][3]

The building is located on a site bordered by Calles 17 and M and Calles 19 and N in the Vedado.^[3][1] In 1952 the CMQ Radio and TV Network located at Calle Rampa and M in el Vedado planned to provide administrative offices, a radio station and housing for employees. CMQ selected a 110,000 sq. ft. plot of land costing approximately^[a] 700,000 pesos.^[2] The company Fomento de Hipotecas Aseguradas (FHA) financed 80% of the cost of the residences and 60% of the commercial shops. El Banco Continental Cubano granted a credit of 6 million pesos.^[3]

Work began in February 1954 and finished in June 1956. At the time of construction it was the second-largest residential concrete building in the world, second only to the Martinelli Building in São Paulo, Brazil. It surpassed the López Serrano Building in height which had been Cuba's tallest building.

In the early 1960s, middle-class owners of residential floor units had their properties nationalized by the current government. In the 1970s the building housed Soviet and Eastern bloc specialists and advisors and the ground store supermarket was for non-Cubans only. In 2000 an elevator cable snapped killing one person. In the 2000s the building was repainted and renovated and much of the building was given over to temporary housing of foreign guest workers, primarily from Venezuela.

A penthouse in the FOCSA was used as the apartment of the protagonist Sergio Carmona Mendoyo[3], played by Sergio Corrieri, in the film Memories of Underdevelopment, a 1968 film written and directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea.^[4] Sergio, a wealthy bourgeois aspiring writer, decides to stay in Cuba even though his wife and friends flee to Miami. Sergio looks back over the changes in Cuba, from the Cuban Revolution to the missile crisis, the effect of living in an underdeveloped country, and his relations with his girlfriends Elena and Hanna. Memories of Underdevelopment is a complex character study of alienation during the turmoil of social changes. The film is told in a highly subjective point of view through a fragmented narrative that resembles the way memories function. Throughout the film, Sergio narrates action, and at times is used as a tool to present bits of political information about the climate in Cuba at the time. In several instances, real-life documentary footage of protests and political events are incorporated into the film and played over Sergio’s narration to expose the audience to the reality of the Revolution. The timeframe of the film is somewhat ambiguous, but it appears to take place over a few months.^[5]

Before the film's release, both the director, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, and the main actor, Sergio Corrieri, were concerned that the film wouldn’t be successful.^[6] The film was largely inexpensive to produce, as it was made without many technological or economic resources,^[6] and as a result Alea feared that his vision wouldn’t translate to the screen.

Another concern of Alea’s was that Corrieri would seem too young for his part. At the time of shooting in 1968 Corrieri was 28, yet the character was intended to be 38. Alea and Corrieri worked together to capture the "different rhythm" that Corrieri needed to take on to play the part of someone 10 years his senior in a number of ways, including by dyeing Corrieri’s hair grey.^[6]

Hanna, Sergio’s long-lost love in the film, was intended to be a much larger character, but the actress that ended up being cast was not a professional, so the character’s role was reduced.^[6]

Because of the political turmoil between the US and Cuba at the time, the US government denied Alea a visitor’s visa in 1970 when he attempted to enter the US to receive several awards he had won for Memories of Underdevelopment, using the Trading with the Enemy Act as justification.^[7] Sergio's apartment in the film was a penthouse in the FOCSA Building.^[8]

Additional concrete massing at the center of the Y, apartments F and G, help resist lateral forces. The walls extend through the rear wall to support the corridors. The wall and slab structural system form a three-dimensional lattice resisting horizontal forces. A high strength concrete mix from 3,000 to 7,000 psi. was used.^[1] The tower and corridors show prefabricated panels on the exterior. Reinforced concrete columns support the podium and the stories below. The residential block, the 'Y,' is supported by thirteen eleven-inch walls.

The building was chosen in February 1997 by the Unión Nacional de Arquitectos e Ingenieros de la Construcción de Cuba (UNAICC) as one of the seven wonders of Cuban civil engineering.^[3][9]

High-strength concrete has a compressive strength greater than 40 MPa (5800 psi). In the UK, BS EN 206-1^[10] defines High strength concrete as concrete with a compressive strength class higher than C50/60. High-strength concrete is made by lowering the water-cement (W/C) ratio to 0.35 or lower. Often silica fume is added to prevent the formation of free calcium hydroxide crystals in the cement matrix, which might reduce the strength at the cement-aggregate bond.

Low W/C ratios and the use of silica fume make concrete mixes significantly less workable, which is particularly likely to be a problem in high-strength concrete applications where dense rebar cages are likely to be used. To compensate for the reduced workability, superplasticizers are commonly added to high-strength mixtures. Aggregate must be selected carefully for high-strength mixes, as weaker aggregates may not be strong enough to resist the loads imposed on the concrete and cause failure to start in the aggregate rather than in the matrix or at a void, as normally occurs in regular concrete.

In some applications of high-strength concrete the design criterion is the elastic modulus rather than the ultimate compressive strength.^[11]

The FOCSA has 39 floors 4 of which are dedicated to commercial use, two floors are for parking. Twenty-eight floors have thirteen residences each. The thirty-fourth floor has six penthouses on a plinth made possible by the structural walls which stop below this floor. Each penthouse is the size of two apartments (A+B, C+D, E+F, etc.). The penthouses have a dedicated elevator and patio-courtyards open to the sky. All apartment floors are terrazzo on cinders.^[1]

The site may be divided into three parts: 1- A shallow, mixed-use “wall and slab” Y of 35 floors above a base. 2- The podium of outdoor amenities including two swimming pools and a club for guests and tenants. The podium covers the entire site. 3- Four floors of building services, commercial spaces, and parking for 500 cars located below the podium^[9][1]

Apartments are a one-half level up or down from the corridors. A typical floor contains 13 apartments, five have two bedrooms and a maid's room. The cost of the apartments was $21,500 for the larger units in the center and $17,500 for the smaller ones. It was stipulated that an additional $30 per each floor was charged the higher up in the building the unit was located, the highest apartments were the first to be sold.^[3]

Located in the tower, are the building's four tenant and two service elevators and two sets of stairs. One of the service elevators is dedicated to the restaurant and the observation floor. The other service elevator is for the apartments and is linked to the service corridors. The tower also contains offices on the 37th floor for the restaurant, “La Torre,” on the 38th floor and an observation room on the 39th floor.^[9]

• 
  Typical floor plan. Stairs from the tenant corridor. Service stairs shown below.
• 
  Entrance to apartment half a floor down from corridor.
• 
  Apartments located one-half floor up or down from corridors.
• 
  Typical apartment showing service and tenant stairs to two different levels of two corridors.^[b]

The podium contains a clubhouse, offices and swimming pools for adults and children. It has gardens, lighted paths, and benches. There is a ramp to the street located at the corner of 19th and M, the podium was used as a staging area during the construction of the project.^[9] Below the podium at the fourth level are building offices.^[1]

Marked by a two-lane covered Porte-cochѐre at street level is the building's entrance. Inside is the building desk, a large waiting area, and the tenant elevator lobby. The restaurant “El Emperador” and a supermarket a bank, post office, theaters, and two radio stations are also on the ground floor. (COCO and Radio Metropolitana)^[12] Various cafes situated around the perimeter of the site along a double-loaded corridor traversing the site from Calle M to N. Light filters to the interior corridor from openings in the podium.^[9] On the second floor (green in section diagram) is the administrative offices for the building.

The wall extends through the rear wall to support the corridors on the outside of the building. They are separated (vertically) by twenty inches to provide a continuous space for apartment ventilation and views to the west.^[3] There are three sets of service and tenant corridors every other floor. The center corridor is for service the other two long corridors are for tenants. The service and tenant corridors are unrecognizable from the exterior, except that the service corridors are shorter in length, this reflects the location of the service stairs of the end units, A and L. Service and tenant corridors are located at different heights. From each apartment, the exit stair goes up to the tenant corridor and down to the service corridor. There was initially a private elevator to each apartment (X on the plan), which was never installed.

• 
  Service corridor, the section at tenant stairs.
• 
  Floating corridors, rear elevation.
• 
  Tenant (blue) & service (red) stairs from apartments to corridors.
• 
  Interior of service corridor looking north.

The FOCSA offers a new typology in residential single-loaded corridor design with its twenty-inch separation between corridors allowing for cross ventilation of the apartments and views to the opposite side of the corridors. There is a dropped ceiling over the bathrooms and maid's room that allows for natural ventilation to flow through the apartment.^[c] Closet doors have vent grilles on their tops and bottoms to allow for air circulation. Curiously, the kitchen window is located horizontally in the center of the wall under the cabinets similar to Edificio del Seguro Médico by Antoni Quintana.

• 
  Twenty inch separation between corridors showing apartment windows.
• 
  Separation of corridors for ventilation and views.
• 
  Twenty inch separation.

• Edificio del Seguro Médico, Havana
• López Serrano Building
• Radiocentro CMQ Building
• Malecón, Havana
• Monument to the Victims of the USS Maine (Havana)

• 
  Roof showing penthouse courtyard openings.
• 
  Tower exterior showing prefabricated concrete panels and change in level.
• 
  Rear service stairs to tower apartments.
• 
  Service floor. Service elevators & stairs to tower apartments.
• 
  Tower detail showing north corner windows, prefabricated concrete panels, and change in level.
• 
  Detail of original signage.
• 
  Tenant corridor looking north.
• 
  Service corridor looking south.
• 
  Apartment up to tenant corridor, the window below between corridors.
• Tenant corridor to apartments.
  Tenant corridor to apartments.
• 
  Window between corridors in stair down from the apartment to the service corridor.
• 
  Window between corridors at tenant stair.
• 
  Tenant elevator lobby, tower apartment stairs.

Martín Domínguez Esteban

La sombra del arquitecto Martín Domínguez Esteban

Havana skyline from Havana Hilton

Exploring Havana: The tallest building in Cuba, El Focsa.

Derek Malcolm of the Guardian places "Memorias del Subdesarrollo" at number 54 in his 100 greatest movies

Memories of Underdevelopment: Imaging History an essay by Joshua Jelly-Schapiro at the Criterion Collection

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