Los Carpinteros The Havana-based collective Los Carpinteros (The Carpenters) has created some of the most important work to emerge from Cuba in the past decade. Formed in 1991, the trio (consisting of Marco Castillo, Dagoberto Rodríguez, and, until his departure in June 2003, Alexandre Arrechea) adopted their name in 1994, deciding to renounce the notion of individual authorship and to refer back to an older guild tradition of artisans and skilled laborers. Interested in the intersection between art and society, the group merges architecture, design, and sculpture in unexpected and often humorous ways, creating objects and drawings for objects that negotiate the space between the functional and the nonfunctional. The built environment has been a persistent theme in Los Carpinteros's work. For a traveling installation in 2001, Ciudad transportable (Transportable City), the group created ten tents out of nylon and aluminum tubing to form a mini-community of iconic buildings, including a church, a school, a lighthouse, a prison, a military barracks, and a domed capitol—some of them abstracted from actual buildings in Havana. Easily dismantled, packed, and moved between exhibition venues, the structures comment on the crumbling state of the Cuban infrastructure, and more generally, on the transient nature of the urban experience in today's global age. Embajada Rusa (Russian Embassy) (2003) is one of several wooden sculptures based upon recognizable buildings in Havana. A towering monstrosity constructed in the late 1980s, the Russian embassy was once a formidable symbol of Soviet power in Cuba and home to hundreds of diplomats; it now houses a vastly reduced staff and is a shell of its former self. In this work, Los Carpinteros has transformed the well-known landmark into a finely crafted cedar chest of drawers. As in other related works with cabinets in the shape of functional objects and structures—a grenade, a water tank, a coffee pot—the original significance and purpose of this building is obliterated, and it becomes something patently nonsensical. Embajada Rusa (Russian Embassy), 2003. Solid cedar and cedar plywood, 118 1/4 x 43 1/4 x 43 1/4 inches (300.4 x 109.9 x 109.9 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Gift, Mugrabi Family, 2004 (acquisition in progress).