Onlookers crowd together to watch the spectacle, and some take advantage of the situation to carry off rebar and other materials.
14ymedio, Havana, Darío Hernández, March 4, 2026 – The official demolition of the Higher Institute of Industrial Design (ISDi), now taking place, is in reality the final sigh of a very, very slow death. What the excavators of the Construction Materials Business Group (Geicon) are destroying at number 710 Belascoaín Street, in Central Havana, is barely what remains of the building after four years of closure, partial collapses, looting, and absolute institutional neglect.
This Tuesday, the site, very close to the busy Carlos III Avenue, was packed with people. Workers, police officers, and onlookers crowded into Carlos J. Finlay Park, which faces the building’s façade, or walked around its sides along Enrique Barnet, Maloja, and San Carlos streets. Several, as 14ymedio confirmed, were carrying away rebar under the impassive gaze of the officers guarding the site.
Unlike similar situations in which the police cordon off the area, even prohibiting the use of cell phones, on this occasion people approached, took photos, and recorded videos without being discreet. There were also people inside, ignoring the mandatory safety measures in such cases.
The motionless presence of two excavators, one orange and one yellow, parked in front of what used to be the ISDi, shows that the demolition work is proceeding at a leisurely pace. Many sections still remain to be torn down.
At the back, along San Carlos Street, the rubble reaches the opposite sidewalk, filling the houses across the street with dust and debris. One neighbor complained to this newspaper: “It’s clearly a poorly done job, and we don’t know how long it will last.”
Residents have been enduring the deterioration of the ISDi ruins since March 2022, when the building was closed after an “architectural flaw” was detected that endangered students and staff. Without the State taking action to resolve those “flaws,” part of the interior façade collapsed in July 2024, and half a year later, in January 2025, another partial collapse left an elderly woman injured and four families without access to their homes.
In October of last year, authorities had to assign guards after graphic designer Esteban Aquino, a former student of the Institute, reported on social media, illustrating his message with photos, that numerous institutional documents, including theses, books, and catalogs, were scattered in nearby Carlos J. Finlay Park. Not only papers were stolen from the old school but also doors and windows, as neighbors told 14ymedio at the time.
That its empty spaces were being used as bathrooms and dumping grounds, with the resulting health consequences for the neighborhood amid an arbovirus epidemic, was the most recent episode in its agony. However, the building’s final expiration has yet to arrive. In 1982, it was converted into the headquarters of the Polytechnic Institute of Industrial Design, the precursor to ISDi. Originally, it had been a military hotel and officers club for the Spanish Army. It later served as the Cadet School (1874–1878), an Asylum for Widows and Orphans, the General Staff headquarters during the first U.S. Occupation, and even the Ministry of Public Health before the Revolution. Even the official demolition is unfolding in slow motion.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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