Nicolás José Braulio del Carmen Quintana y Gómez Arango Díaz was born on January 26, 1925, in Havana, Cuba.

Quintana formally represented Cuba at the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne in Aix-en-Provence in 1953 and Dubrovnik in 1956.

[6] When the revolution triumphed in 1959, Quintana was accused of being a conspirator by Che Guevara and he was given three options for punishment: exile, incarceration, or the firing squad.

He moved to Venezuela and then Puerto Rico where he continued work as an architect, before eventually settling down in Miami by the 1980s.

[8] Quintana began his teaching career in the Department of Architecture at Florida International University in 1986, where he taught until 2010.