ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the Cuban take on coping with the crisis as a reasonable balance between individual action-taking and innovative policy-making. It exemplifies what a global mitigation and adaptation agenda for a sustainable twenty-first century might look like. In 2017, the government approved a new adaptation strategy, the so-called 'Tarea Vida', which is implemented and controlled by the Cuban Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment. From the moment the Cuban Meteorological Service determines that a hurricane will hit land, the entire country has approximately 72 hours to prepare to 'welcome' it. The Cuban palette of adaptations out of necessity could offer a very different point of view to disaster-resilient architecture: not only a reactive but also a proactive architecture that bends rather than breaks. A new generation of architects must challenge conventional practice, which is developed with expensive materials and inadaptive techniques.
