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José Alfredo Gelabert Marcelo (8 March 1927, Sagua La Grande, Cuba) and Rosa Navia Castaño (10 June 1929, Havana, Cuba) were architects who jointly founded and ran the firm “Gelabert-Navia Arquitectos,” which practiced in Cuba until 1960 and later in Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and Florida. Both Gelabert and Navia graduated from the University of Havana with degrees in architecture in 1952, Navia graduating first in her class. In May of 1953, the couple married and remained together for the rest of their lives and had three children: a son, José, and daughters Ana and Cristina.

While still practicing in Cuba, the couple completed a number of projects. In 1955, they built a residence on Conill and Santa Ana in the Ensanche del Vedado, followed by another residence in 1956 - both of which utilized modern codes and climate adaptation. In 1958 under the instruction of its then director, the historian Herminio Portell Vilá, the couple also designed the building originally known as the Instituto Cultural Cubano-Norteamericano (U.S.-Cuba Cultural Institute), now known as Cuba's Advanced Institute for Foreign Relations, described by Nick Miroff as “once a mainstay of the two countries' deep and complicated ties.”

In 1959, Gelabert became the Director of Architecture, Urban Design, and Construction of the City of Havana, where he was responsible for directing a number of projects including: the José Martí Sports Complex facing the Malecón; the launching of the expansion of the city to the other side of the harbor, which came to be known as La Habana del Este; the Parque Camilo Cienfuegos; as well as a number of schools, hospitals, and child care centers across the island. He was also the last freely elected president of the Colegio de Arquitectos de Cuba - an association formed, in the words of the founders in 1916, in order to “ensure compliance with current laws and greater prestige of the profession” (Arquitectura Cuba). During this time, Navia, described by her family as a feminist who would scoff at describing herself as such, ran the company’s office in her husband’s absence and embarked on design projects of her own; for example, in 1961 she designed the Ministry of Transportation, a modern high-rise building on Avenida de Rancho Boyeros between Lombillo and Tulipán. Navia’s solo command of the business when necessary was similar to her fellow female architect Gabriela Menéndez, who also ran her and her husband’s firm while he undertook a government position. However, despite the clear capability of these female architects in terms of their roles as both designers and business people, women are consistently under- and misrepresented in narratives of Cuban architectural history, as evidenced, for example, in Patrick Calmon de Carvalho Braga’s scholarship on Arcquitectura Cuba - a periodical published by the same Colegio de Arquitectos de Cuba that Gelabert resided over as President. Braga notes, “Authorship in the journal comprises either of anonymous editorials and articles or articles authored by male architects, often publishing as sole authors” (236), which raises a problem of the absence of women in written records of architectural practice and development. Subsequently, Florencia Peñate Díaz’s feminist architectural scholarship offers an important counternarrative to that of a modern Cuban landscape designed and built exclusively by men.1

Despite the fact that they eventually left Cuba in 1961 because of their counter-revolutionary stance, Gelabert and Navia’s attitude toward the revolution was not always negative. Their son, José A. Gelabert-Navia, who is Professor and former Dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Miami, stated that his father “was very much with the revolution until he was against the revolution” (qtd. in Hurley). When the revolution began to interrupt the young couple’s plans, however, they sent their children with their grandparents to live in Spain as, despite the fact that she was born and raised in Cuba, Navia was actually of Spanish origin. The couple sought asylum in the Venezuelan embassy and then fled to Puerto Rico, where they renewed their architectural firm and practiced for seventeen years, producing over one hundred built projects in that time. In 1978 they relocated again; this time they headed to Venezuela, where their work focused primarily on a large-scale, low-income Llano Alto community built in the desert State of Apure, which borders with Brazil and Colombia. Their 1981 move to Miami was the last the couple made. They remained here and continued to stay committed to the practice of architecture until the end of their lives; for example, in conjunction with internationally acclaimed architect Charles Gwathmey of Gwathmey-Siegel, New York, they worked on the Joan Lehman Building of the (Miami) Museum of Contemporary Art in 1996. Their work featured in the recent exhibit, "Cuban Architects at Home and In Exile: The Modernist Generation." On October 17, 2017, Navia passed away in Miami, FL, surrounded by loved ones and was followed just eighteen days later by Gelabert on November 5, 2017. Their son, José, donated portfolios of their work to the Cuban Heritage Collection to safeguard their memory in Cuban architectural history.

Laura Bass
UGrow Fellow for the Department of Manuscripts and Archives Management, 2019-2020

1. See Florencia Peñate Díaz, “Significado de la obra de las arquitectas cubanas Elana y Alicia Pujals Mederos / The significance of the work of Cuban architects Elena and Alicia Pujals Mederos.” Arquitectura y Urbanismo, vol. 37, no. 1, 2016, pp. 26-36. Also, Diaz, “La obra de las arquitectas cubanas de la República entre los años 40 y fines de los 50 del siglo XX / The work of female Cuban architects of the Republic between the 1940s and the late 50s of the 20th century.” Arquitectura y Urbanismo, vol. 33, no. 1, 2012, pp. 70-82.

Norman Van Aken: Timeline

1951 Born in Diamond Lake, Illinois

1972 Began culinary career as a cook at “Tom & Jerry's Fireside” in Libertyville, IL

Early 1980’s Partnered with restaurateur Gordan Sinclair to open “Sinclair’s American Grill” in Florida

1985 Worked at “Louie’s Backyard” in Key West, where he is visited by Charlie Trotter

1986 Coined the term “New World Cuisine”

1988 Published his first monograph, Feast of Sunlight

1989 Executive Chef at the Betsy Ross Hotel’s “A Mano” and “Stars and Stripes Café” in Miami Beach, FL

1995 Opened his restaurant “Norman’s” in Coral Gables, FL, which is nominated “Best New Restaurant” by the James Beard Foundation.

1995 Published, The Great Exotic Fruit

1997 Published, New World Cuisine

2003 Opened “Norman’s” at The Ritz-Carlton, Orlando, FL

2003 Won the James Beard “Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America” award

2005 Norman’s in Coral Gables named a finalist for The James Beard Foundation’s “Outstanding Restaurant.”

2010-11 Operated the Norman’s 180 at The Colonnade Hotel in Coral Gables, FL

2012 Published, My Key West Kitchen

2013 Published the autobiographical book, No Experience Necessary: The Culinary Education of Chef Norman Van Aken

2016 Published, Norman Van Aken’s Florida Kitchen

2016 Inducted into MenuMasters Hall of Fame

2019 Norman’s at The Ritz-Carlton in Orlando, FL closed

Painter, sculptor, cartoonist, and illustrator Enrique Riverón was born in 1902 in Cienfuegos, Cuba, and belonged to the first generation of Cuban modernists, experimenting with Cubism and pursuing abstraction from very early on in his career. During his early twenties Riverón traveled to France, Italy, Belgium, and Spain to study under scholarships and attend the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid. In 1926 Riverón's first major one-man exhibition took place at the Association Paris Amerique Latine where the catalog introduction was written by noted Mexican writer Alfonso Reyes.

In 1927 Riverón returned to Havana and had a one-man show of his European work at the Asociación de Pintores y Escultores, as well as several other shows in Havana and New York. He moved to the United States in 1930 and became a United States citizen in 1943.

In addition to being known for his naturalistic drawings of street life in Paris and Cuba, Riverón began working with collage in the 1930s and was, for a number of years, a cartoonist for newspapers in Havana and other publications such as The New Yorker and Cine Mundial, which was published in New York and widely circulated in Latin America. He also worked in Hollywood for a time as an illustrator for Walt Disney Pictures.

From 1940 on, Riverón focused on painting and sculpture. He moved to Miami from Wichita, Kansas, in 1964. Enrique Riverón died in 1998.

Dr. Murray Sanders was a physician and medical researcher with the University of Miami and Variety Children's Hospital. He was the former chairman of the Department of Medical Research of the University of Miami.