After reading Juhani Pallasmaa's essay, "The Geometry of Feeling," and watching "The Art of Building Ruins," I gained a better understanding of how Architecture shapes someone's life physically, mentally and even spiritually. Florian Borchmeyer and company strategically get a couple of Cuban citizens' perspectives on their environment and how it affected them for the rest of their lives. Fidel Castro, during the Cuban revolution, decided to deviate from the maintenance of these facilities for fear of invasion by the United States. Unfortunately, that prediction was miscalculated and caused Cuba to be seen as a ruin and began to collapse, erode and frighten the occupants or residents around the structure. For example, an elderly woman and three other people were injured when an interior part of a building collapsed in Havana. A portion of the structure above a room gave way in the massively populated neighborhood. Two families lived in the building. Among the injured was a girl, all of whom were hospitalized and listed in stable condition. The lack of means of subsistence and poor construction capacity are among Cuba's main social and economic problems. Havana is a city of two million inhabitants, but it needs around twenty-eight thousand housing units to accommodate those looking for homes and those living in buildings in poor condition. This is an episode of the disturbing factors that are still inhabited and often appreciated. Can buildings have memories? Buildings inhabit occupants and from that perspective one could hypothesize that we as humans have moments to hold on to, memories. However, if we have those moments inside a building, t...... middle of paper ...... helps that sense of shelter without Totico keeping that building functional; the occupants would be homeless and on the streets. His wife even states that the building is nothing without Totico and when he is gone, she doubts anyone will replace him. As a result, this will lead to the demolition of the building. The small remaining piece of land that Nicanor de Campo occupies with his wife has changed his life and his vision of governing his country. He was once an optimist of the Castro regime until he witnessed firsthand the chaos caused by Castro's reign, for example, the "ruins" of Cuba. As mentioned above, Nicanor's land was seized and government agents they occupied the majority. The agents even went so far as to claim the fruit of the tree as their own. What happened on that land changed the lives of Nicanor and his family for the rest of their lives.