Exhibition studies U.S international relations through architecture

Exhibition explores impact of the U.S. embassy in Cuba, which opened in 1953 and closed in 1961 following the end of diplomatic relations between the countries. After the brutality of World War II, the United States sought to usher in a new era of optimism in the late 1940's through an ambitious embassy program that called on some of the greatest architects of the century to design buildings that represented a new foreign policy of openness, dialogue and progress. Those efforts are now the central theme of the latest exhibition at the Neubauer Collegium entitled Havana Case Study , which runs now through Dec. It is one of several programs that have been organized on campus this fall in conjunction with the Chicago Architecture Biennial. The project is the second in a series of case studies by New York-based Canadian artist Terence Gower. Funded by a Guggenheim Fellowship, the series began in 2010 with a study of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. After several years of extensive research in Havana and U.S. archives, Gower's new project explores the history and impact of the embassy, which opened its doors in Cuba in 1953.