Two special events in New Orleans featuring Celebrated Cuban-American author and architect Hermes Mallea will be co-sponsored by The New Orleans Hispanic Heritage Foundation (NOHHF), Tulane University Center for Inter-American Policy and Research (CIPR), and Cuban and Caribbean Studies Institute (CCSI), along with The Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans (PRC).

Thursday November 10, 2022 6:00-8:00PM

The Preservation Resource Center (PRC)

Design in the Tropics: Cuban Design Excellence with Hermes Mallea

Mr. Mallea will present Havana Living Today: Cuban Home Style Now, a look at the continued and storied design excellence that can be seen in homes of Havana’s most elite residents. His talk will be followed by a conversation about excellence in global design, between Mr. Mallea and local interior designer and PRC board member Nomita Joshi-Gupta. A reception hosted by the PRC MultiCultural Heritage Committee and a book signing will follow. The book will be available for purchase on site. 923 Tchoupitoulas Street, New Orleans, LA. 70130.

Friday, November 11, 2022 6:00-8:00PM

Tulane University Freeman Auditorium at the Woldenberg Art Center on Newcomb Circle

Mr. Mallea will present Havana Living Today: Cuban Home Style Now.

Following his talk, a reception will be hosted by the New Orleans Hispanic Heritage Foundation and a book signing will take place in Woodward Way, just outside the Freeman Auditorium. The book will be available for purchase ($55) at the event by Garden District Book Shop.

Admission to both events is free and open to the public. Seating is limited.

While documenting Havana’s landmark historic houses, architect Hermes Mallea was stunned to discover that the gracious family life traditionally associated with the city’s grand houses had not disappeared with the Cuban Revolution. Since 2010, he has encountered stylish Havana houses brimming with personality, homes that had been created despite the island’s economic hardships and isolation. Mallea appreciated these interiors not just for their esthetic beauty, but for the way they keep Havana’s design traditions alive, making a direct connection to the style of the city before its political upheavals. While in the minority on the Island, there are homeowners—art collectors, expats, lawyers, painters, businessmen, fashion designers, musicians —who welcomed him into homes that reflected their unique personal styles. HAVANA LIVING TODAY: Cuban Home Style Now celebrates the homeowners’ individual flair and ingenuity and brings the reader inside a world that has never been presented in this depth, countering long-held preconceptions about how people live in this vibrant city. Mallea sees these interiors as evidence of the Cuban peoples’ hopes for their future and their vision of what Havana Style might be.

Hermes Mallea, who lives in New York City, received a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Miami, attended the Master’s Program in Historic Preservation at Colombia University, and is a licensed architect in the State of New York and a member of the AIA. He has published and lectured extensively in the U.S. and abroad on the subjects of Caribbean architecture and historic Cuban family life in Havana and elsewhere and has presented papers on the design links between Paris and Havana, historic photographs of Cuban domestic interiors, and Havana lifestyles stories chronicling the individualism and self-expression that has been accomplished in Cuba in spite the island’s severe constraints over the last sixty years.