A week ago, we announced the 15 finalist projects of the 2022 Building of the Year award —the prize for the best architecture in Spanish. Our jury of experts—you, our readers—made an initial selection of 15 from nearly 1,000 architectural works built in Latin America and Spain to proceed with the final vote for 3 projects that represent the best of the architecture that inspires, defines, and shapes us.

Today is the day to announce the winners of ODA2022!

We are pleased to present three projects located in Colombia, Cuba, and Chile that demonstrate the relevance of thinking of architecture as a solution to specific and local needs in order to improve the quality of life, at any scale or program. 

The 2022 Building of the Year Award is presented to you by Dornbracht, renowned for its leading designs in architecture, which can be found internationally in bathrooms and kitchens. See the selected projects below.

The Mayor's Office of Santiago de Cali, the Special Housing Fund (FEV), and the Colombian Society of Architects – Valle del Cauca (SCA Valle) launched a public competition for the preliminary urban, architectural, and landscape design of a sustainable rural social housing prototype. This project is designed to resettle families with productive vocations.

For the project, located in the city of Cali, within the Valle del Cauca region of Colombia, the jury awarded first place to the architecture firm DARP – De Arquitectura y Paisaje + Ana Elvira Vélez.

Marta Vall-llossera Ferran has become the first woman to hold the presidency of the Superior Council of Colleges of Architects of Spain following the extraordinary election called after the recent death of CSCAE President Lluís Comerón at the age of 61.

Over the last two years, the city of Madrid has hosted, and continues to host, the traveling exhibition of the Metropolitan Forest. It has three main objectives: first, to present Madrid's residents with the winning and finalist ideas from the competition held to redefine the future of their city; second, to communicate the processes the city will undertake regarding sustainability, urban resilience, and environmental education; and finally, to foster concrete strategic alliances between the Forest and the citizens of Madrid.

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The National Monument had been closed since February 2010 due to damage caused by the earthquake that same year. Thanks to funding from the Regional Government of Maule and the Ministry of Cultures, Arts, and Heritage, it reopened its doors on November 24.

For the third time since its founding in 2002, Colombia will host the Latin American Social Workshop for Architecture Students under the name 'Tejiendo Paisajes: TSL Manizales 2022'—the first edition of the event since the onset of the pandemic.

The ARQUITECTURA Awards, organized by the Higher Council of Colleges of Architects of Spain (CSCAE) and officially sponsored by COMPAC, concluded their inaugural edition with a celebration at CaixaForum Madrid, where the nine winning projects were announced. The awards recognized and celebrated social, cultural, and sustainable values in architecture and urbanism, with a particular focus on the projects' impact on human health, well-being, and safety, as well as planetary sustainability.

The professional network Soy Arquitecta, the Feminist Urbanism, Architecture, and Design Research Group, and the Observatory of Urban and Territorial Phenomena (FAU-UNT) organized the Argentine Female Architects Survey within the collaborative framework of CONICET, PICT "Design, Architecture, and Urbanism with a Gender Perspective in Argentina," and the Gender, Cities, and Territories Diploma program. The survey aimed to diagnose the employment status of Argentine female architects across the country's different regions, reflecting on the challenges they face in various professional environments and proposing new lines of action and transformation to improve their current situation.

At first glance, textile materials and clay do not share many similarities. However, Oficina Penadés brings these two concepts together, showcasing the potential of a new textile-based material combined with clay processing techniques in “Looks like magic!”, an exhibition held during the recent Milan Design Week.

The Central Society of Architects (SCA) and the Association of Architects of the Province of Buenos Aires (CAPBA) organized the National Ideas Competition to develop a Rail Cultural Hub. The project includes a new General Railway Archive (AGF), a branch of the National Railway Training Center (CENACAF), and new facilities to protect records and showcase the historical and cultural heritage of Argentine Railways (Ferrocarriles Argentinos).

Marcelo Villafañe (1951), an architect from Rosario, passed away on Wednesday, January 26, as announced on social media by the Colegio de Arquitectos Distrito 2.

The savings and credit cooperative Visón de los Andes, “VisAndes,” launched a competition for the design of its new headquarters in Salcedo, Ecuador. As one of the strongest cooperatives in its sector, it sought to incorporate sustainability principles alongside its own core values, inviting prominent architecture firms from across the country.

Metha Arquitectos and Be Maarch have won first prize in the design competition for the remodeling of the Plaza de Armas in Juliaca, Peru. Key aspects of the proposal highlighted by the jury include: prioritizing pedestrians over vehicles, strengthening institutional character and environmental value, and creating a space that introduces nature. Additionally, the jury noted that the project understands and accommodates informal commerce dynamics, establishing a hierarchical longitudinal axis between the plaza and the school to create a pedestrian urban space. This is complemented by a secondary transverse transit axis and organized to eliminate architectural barriers, creating more inclusive spaces. See the project below.

The Municipality of Flores launched a public competition for preliminary architectural proposals for a mixed-use building called Mercado Trinidad, to be located in the city of Trinidad, Uruguay. By integrating existing heritage structures and renovating or replacing the remaining buildings and open spaces, the project aims to redirect truck and heavy machinery traffic from the municipal workshops and warehouses currently operating there. This shift will promote urban regeneration and revitalize the central area with a new urban facility.

In August 2021, the call for entries was launched for the ideas competition for the "Scenic Garden and Pavilion" project. The primary goal was the reorganization and comprehensive recovery of the area known as the "ecological parking lot" to integrate it with the Centro Cultural del Bosque (CCB). The project called for the design of a Scenic Pavilion conceived as "a permanent space with unobtrusive, harmonious architecture that blends into the Forest's environment, establishing a point of connection with both the performing and visual arts ecosystems, looking toward the Zoo and the Museum of Modern Art."

Commemorating PAC 3.0 and PAC 4.0, which took place during the quarantine, and launching PAC 5.0, Sto Chile celebrated at "Casa ArchDaily" with competition partners and friends from the private, public, trade, and industrial sectors.

Join the PAC team!

The Association of Architectural Offices (AOA) has partially renewed its board of directors, electing urban planner Pablo Jordán as its new president for the 2022–2023 term. Meanwhile, architect Marisol Rojas has been selected as vice president.

From September 23 to 25, 2022, the eighth edition of the Open House Madrid Architecture Festival will take place, offering access to more than 100 historic and contemporary buildings that are generally closed to the public. José Antonio Corrales and Ramón Vázquez Molezún will be the featured architects of this new edition of the festival, which aims to bring architecture closer to citizens.

The DNA Paris Design Awards have announced the winners of the 2022 edition in the categories of architectural design, interior design, landscape design, product design, and graphic design. The results were announced at the end of June, and the awards ceremony will take place in Paris in September 2022.

Solar Greenhouse is a greenhouse designed for energy generation and self-sufficient food cultivation. Its creators define it as the next step toward a greener agricultural transformation and an advancement in the fight against food and energy poverty. The project was carried out by a group of students, professionals, and experts from the Master in Advanced Ecological Buildings and Biocities (MAEBB) at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) Valldaura Labs, and was built in the Collserola Natural Park on the outskirts of Barcelona.

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On October 1, architect Rozana Montiel presented the exhibition "Blanco en tres actos" (White in Three Acts) at the Colegio de San Ildefonso in Mexico City. The exhibition invites visitors to experience the design processes of the architect's studio in three moments: "Habitar el vacío" (Inhabiting the Void), "Hojas en blanco" (Blank Pages), and "Un manifiesto" (A Manifesto) within an interior space covered in paper, seeking to reframe the blank page through a shifting of time and textures. On this canvas, fifty projects hand-sketched at various scales form a grid that reveals the mysterious moment when an idea is conceived.

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The public architectural design competition for the Velodrome in Gibraltar Metropolitan Park in Bogotá, D.C., was organized by the District Institute for Recreation and Sport (IDRD). Located in the Kennedy locality, the competition—with advisory support from the Colombian Society of Architects (SCA)—aimed to select a preliminary architectural proposal for the design, technical studies, architectural and technical coordination, and related design tasks.

The jury comprised architects Leonardo Álvarez Yepes (representing SCA Bogotá D.C. and Cundinamarca), María Elvira Madriñan Saa and Fernando Montenegro Lizarralde (representing the SCA National Presidency), and Nelson Yovany Jiménez and Felipe Alberto Morales Sánchez (representing the District Institute of Recreation and Sport). Out of 17 submissions, three prizes and several honorable mentions were awarded. Read on to learn more about the winning projects.

Architect and archivist. She designed the three buildings for the Antorchas Foundation in Buenos Aires. She carried out the assessment, adaptive reuse proposal, budget, and equipment study for the completion and commissioning of the National Library in Buenos Aires. She also served as Director of the ARCA Center (Civil Association for the Archive of Contemporary Argentine Architecture) between 1998 and 2002.

On this day 117 years ago, Juan O'Gorman—the first Mexican functionalist architect—was born, whose work marked a turning point in the architectural production of his era. He trained at what was then the National School of Architecture, where he completed and integrated his studies in architecture and engineering. Considered the father of modern architecture in Mexico, O'Gorman trained in the style of Le Corbusier and the stripped purism of Villagrán, eventually evolving toward the "New Mexican Baroque" movement. His works were characterized primarily by the use of reinforced concrete, asymmetric exteriors, and a constant search for air and light.