Mario Torroella

During this period his brother, Luis Torroella, an economist and revolutionary who had worked against Batista and was part of the 26th of July Movement, headed the Ministry of Finance's table of economists at the age of 27.

As Fidel Castro's regime became overtly aligned to Communism and under the Soviet sphere of influence, Torroella, his brother Luis, and the Martínezes each became involved in the clandestine counterrevolution against Castro, with each eventually resigning from their posts.

Mario Torroella (born March 30, 1935) is a Cuban-American visual artist and architect based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

He is a co-founder of the firm HMFH Architects and a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.

His art is closely associated with the Cuban exile experience and has become well known in the broader international Cuban diaspora.

Mario Torroella, whose full name is Mario Jaime Torroella y Martín-Rivero, was born on March 30, 1935, in Havana's el Vedado neighborhood, then raised in the city of Marianao.

His parents, Juan Torroella y Rooney and Graciela Martín-Rivero y Martínez, were both from prominent Cuban families and were educated in the United States.

His mother was an artist educated first in the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design in Washington, D.C. and then at Havana's Academy of San Alejandro while his father attended Cornell University and returned to Cuba to become a contractor-architect.

Mario Torroella is the youngest of their three sons, following Juan III, the eldest, and Luis, a Cuban revolutionary who opposed the Castro regime.

Like their parents, all three were educated in the United States where they attended Hebron Academy in Maine.

Torroella then attended Dartmouth College where he was influenced by the books of Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier and Swiss architecture critic Sigfried Giedion.

He graduated with his Bachelors of Arts in 1957 after which he enrolled in Harvard Graduate School of Design, receiving his master's degree in architecture in 1962.

Torroella's graduate studies were interrupted by the outbreak of the Cuban Revolution, after which Torroella returned to Cuba to assist the post-Batista revolutionary government, working under architect Frank Martínez in the Ministry of Public Works.

Martinez and his wife Cira (later Cira Porta) were well-connected figures in Havana arts and associates of several prominent Cuban and international art and design figures including Walter Gropius, Roberto Estopiñán, and Cundo Bermúdez.

Through them Torroella would meet leading members of the Cuban art community including René Portocarrero, Raul Milián, Eduardo Abela, Hugo Consuegra, Estopiñán and others.

Torroella and Martinez worked on several ambitious though unrealized public works projects, including the new revolutionary government Film Studios, the National Aquarium, and public housing for agricultural workers.

Mario Torroella had come under suspicion from the Castro regime amidst widespread government crackdowns on dissent, leading Torroella to re-enroll in Harvard, leaving Cuba permanently on September 13, 1960.

His brother Luis sent his daughter and American wife to the United States while he remained in Cuba to coordinate with Martínez and his wife Cira.

He remained with Sert through the early 1960s, during which time he also met his future wife Isabelle Berangere Gambier, a French citizen who went on to study fashion design in Paris.

Torroella also continued to paint alongside his architecture career and began exhibiting his work.

When he resigned from Sert's firm later in the decade to pursue other opportunities, Torroella gifted Sert one of his early works at Sert's residence in the presence of Calder.

Torroella is a Modernist known for his unique approach of integrating color into public buildings in a departure from the standard neutral tones, as well as an emphasis on human scale as espoused by Le Corbusier and Josep Lluis Sert.

Luis Torroella was eventually captured by Castro's forces in Santiago de Cuba, after which he was imprisoned for one year in Havana's La Cabaña before being sent back to Santiago for his execution in October 1962.

Upon returning to the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Torroella studied under prominent Spanish architect and HGSD Dean, Josep Lluís Sert, a close associate of several leading art and design figures of the 20th century, including Le Corbusier, Pablo Picasso, Alexander Calder, Joan Miró and others.

The two bonded over their Cuban and Catalonian heritage and an admiration for the arts, leading Sert to become an influential mentor to Torroella that helped shape his early career.

Following Torroella's graduation in 1962, he was hired by Sert to work in his architecture firm, Torroella's first private sector architecture role in the United States.

In 1969 Torroella co-founded HMFH Architects with Harvard classmates.

As a co-founder, principal, and design director, he led the firm to win several architecture awards, including the William Caudill Citation from the American School & University Magazine, as well as four Walter Taylor Awards from the AASA and the AIA.

In 1986 Torroella won the CINTAS Fellowship in architecture.

In 1989 he designed his private residence, The Torroella House, which would go on to win the Boston Society of Architects’ 1993 Excellence in Design Award.

Another high-profile Torroella project is the Coastal Cement Corporation facility located within the Boston Marine Industrial Park in Boston, Massachusetts.

The facility spans 14,000 square feet of office space and a bagging facility, as well as four large-scale storage silos.

The silos make up the most noticeable portion of the complex with each reaching 120 feet, weighing 7,000 metric tons, and collectively holding 41,000 tons of cement.

In addition to its scale, the project was noteworthy for showcasing Torroella’s signature use of color to offset Modernism’s tendency toward imposing and industrial aesthetics.

Completed in 1989, Torroella led the HMFH Architects team as Design Director and utilized an unconventional application of vivid red accent coloring to add vibrancy and contrast the widespread gray of the concrete.

Another departure from most industrial facilities was the extensive use of landscaping, which also added natural greens to the color scheme.

These elements drew significant attention to the project, earning it the 1990 New England Regional Council/AIA Honor Award for New Commercial Construction, the Washington Waterfront Center’s national Excellence on the Waterfront Award, as well as the Excellence in Concrete Building Design Award from the Portland Cement Association & the Association of General Contractors.

The project was also covered by Architectural Record and reviewed in detail by The Boston Globe which described it as “a beautiful, bold composition” that “Manifests raw power, but also surprising delicacy [...] with much of the drama and sculptural power of the great industrial buildings of America’s past.” The project was also mentioned in the 1994 book Waterfronts: Cities Reclaim Their Edge.

In 2013 Torroella became a member of the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architecture.

Torroella is largely self-taught in the arts, though he had been influenced by repeated exposure.