Quintana, Nicolás, 1925-2011

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Quintana, Nicolás, 1925-2011

Nicolás Quintana was born in 1925 in Havana, Cuba, son of prominent architect Nicolás Quintana, who was the head of the firm of Moenck & Quintana in Havana. The younger Quintana followed in his father's footsteps and enrolled in the School of Architecture at the University of Havana in 1944, where he was greatly influenced by modernist architects such as Walter Gropius and José Luis Sert.

By 1950, Quintana was the head of his father's architectural firm and began to participate in the Junta Nacional de Planificación (Board for National Planning), where he was involved with an urban planning initiative created by architect Nicolás Arroyo. One of his final projects while in Cuba was in 1958, planning for the new construction of the Banco Nacional de Cuba, but the project went unfinished due to the rising tensions during the Cuban Revolution. Following public disagreement with Cuban Revolutionary leaders, Quintana left Cuba with his family in 1960.

In exile, Quintana first lived in Venezuela and then Puerto Rico, where he continued working as an architect. In 1986 he moved permanently to Miami, Florida, where he was a professor in the School of Architecture at Florida International University (FIU) until his retirement in 2010. During his time at FIU, Quintana led the "Habana y sus paisajes" (Havana and its landscapes) project as an initiative to develop plans for saving the architectural heritage of Havana and suggesting steps towards developing urban and rural areas during future reconstruction in Cuba. Quintana died in Miami in 2011.

Record updated by Amanda Moreno, January 2019.