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.Woven Voids
The Archaeological Exploration of Hotel Tropicana’
Author: Kenny Kinugasa Tsui

In Havana’s destructed fragments of historical layers, the mysterious textural and ‘loss’ qualities of the city informed a multi-linear design process that investigated the invisible dimension of void spaces in an assemblage system of spatial composition. The analysis has generated a narrative design based on the disintegration of one building’s lifetime, a hotel, which mutates into its after life; where the void spaces of its original construction have the ecological ability to evolve and reconstruct over time. Spatial fragments are designed in an intertextual system of assemblage, in which the deliberate absences of spatial moments in its woven system allow one’s imagination and curiosity to ‘fill’ in the gaps, and thereby participate in the creation of an architectural construct. The void spaces of the tourist hotel, the public lobby, restaurant, garden and hotel rooms, mutate and reconstructs over time into Santeria religious spaces. Fragmented matter and voids intertwine in the multi-textual exploration of an inherent narrative.

Sometime in the near future, an archeological exploration has begun in the mysterious ruins of a once in a time trendy, touristy hotel in Central Havana. The curious journey through the unknown spaces uncovers evidences of inhabitation of the Santeria religious group, who has adapted the hotel ruin into honoring spaces for their Orishas (gods). These religious icons are worshipped not in their bodily form, but through their symbolical forms, colours, and materials. Thus expose the findings of a series of fantastic altars and divine spaces, assembled with ruined hotel furniture, machines and robotics fused with vivid Santeria arts. Further explorations find a series of aged drawings and magazines, revealing the hotel’s original design from 2006- its status as icon of a huge foreign investment regime, when Havana’s economy was greatly relying on tourism…