Lifetime Achievement Award

Max Borges (b. 1918, Havana): After earning degrees from Georgia Tech and Harvard University, Borges became part of a group of young architects that – during Cuba’s mid-century economic and tourism boom – fashioned the architectural style of their time. His father, Max Borges del Junco, owned one of the principal architectural firms in the island, and Borges himself quickly developed a distinguished practice, winning the National College of Architects Award for his work on the Medical and Surgical Center, built in 1948 in El Vedado. During the next decade, he designed a number of architecturally distinguished homes and apartment buildings in Havana and, in 1951, the fabled Tropicana Cabaret, which became an iconic image for Cuba’s capital. Borges left Cuba in 1959 and continued practicing architecture in various cities in the United States. He lives in Key Biscayne, Fla. (Lifetime Achievement Award, 2006)

Lydia CABRERA (b. 1899, Havana -d. 1991, Miami): One of Cuba’s foremost authorities in Afro-Cuban culture, Cabrera began her studies in the field when she traveled to Paris to study religion and art in 1927. She wrote 23 books on Afro Cuban themes, including El Monte, possibly the most famous of her works, and a dictionary of the Afro-Cuban Yoruba language. Her contributions in the area of literature, anthropology and ethnology were vast. She received  honorary doctorate degrees from Denison University, in Granville, Ohio; Redlands University, in California; Manhattan College in New York and the University of Miami. After her death, her collection of books, photographs and papers went to the University of Miami’s Richter Library, which holds it within its Cuban Heritage Collection. (Lifetime Achievement Award, 1988)

Guillermo CABRERA INFANTE (b. 1929, Gibara-d. 2005, London): Writing as G.Caín, Cabrera Infante first gained fame as the virtuoso film critic for the magazine Carteles, for which he later became news editor. In Havana, he founded Cuba’s Cinemateca and was editor of the literary magazine Lunes de Revolución. In 1962, he traveled to Belgium as cultural attaché, but by 1965, he had abandoned diplomacy and settled permanently in Europe to pursue a literary career that brought him international acclaim. In addition to the short story collectionAsí en la paz como en la guerra and his celebrated novel, Tres Tristes Tigres, Cabrera Infante is the author of Un oficio del siglo XX, a collection of his film reviews; Exorcismos de esti(l)o, La Habana para un infante difunto, Vista del amanecer en el trópico and Mea Cuba. He won the Cervantes literary prize in 1997.  (Lifetime Achievement Award, 2004)

Ricardo Porro (b. 1925, Camagüey): A resident of Paris since 1966, Porro has earned international acclaim for his design for the Art Center in Vaduz, Liechtenstein, and several other major buildings in Europe. Porro began his architectural career in the late 1940s in Havana, where he designed several villas of distinction and, in the early 1960s, the masterful School of Art and School of Modern Dance in the National Art Schools complex.  He has been professor of architecture in universities in Cuba, Venezuela, France, Austria and Israel. His paintings, sculptures, furniture and architectural projects have been the subject of numerous exhibitions and publications around the world. In France, he was honored with the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur and Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. (Lifetime Achievement Award, 2006)

Nicolás QUINTANA: (b. 1925, Havana):  Since 1951, Quintana has worked as principal, in charge of design, in approximately 200 projects in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Aruba, Bahamas, Brazil, New York, Los Angeles and Florida. A historian, lecturer and visiting critic at congresses, seminars, and symposia in Europe, the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean, he was named Scholar in Architecture and Urbanism by Florida International University in 2002. In Cuba, Quintana was director-in-charge of the urban and regional master plans for the Varadero Beach tourist resort and the historic city of Trinidad, Cuba.  He was a member of the International Congress for Modern Architecture (CIAM) and of CIAM’s Team X from 1952 to 1960. Among the awards and honors he has received are the Urban Design Award by AIA Miami Chapter, the Premio Urbe to Architectural Excellence by the Academy of Arts, History, and Archeology of Puerto Rico and the Herencia 2000 award by the Cuban National Heritage Foundation. In 2004, Quintana was named director of the project Havana and its Landscapes, to be executed at FIU’s School of Architecture with the objective of creating a series of urban and architectural guidelines for the Cuban capital in a transition to democracy. (Lifetime Achievement Award, 2004)