In Lima, Nicolás Valencia speaks with Mexican architect Jesús López about ATEA10, the 2024 BIAU award-winning publication that celebrates the first ten years of Atea, a multidisciplinary production and experimentation platform in the La Merced neighborhood of Mexico City.
After two weeks of nominations in the 16th edition of the 2025 Building of the Year Awards, our community evaluated over one thousand projects to select the 15 finalists. This year's awards celebrate excellence in design, innovation, and sustainability across Latin America and Spain, highlighting an exceptional selection of projects on the shortlist. As a public-choice award, we are proud to say that their choices authentically reflect the current state of architecture, while the quality of this year's finalists further underscores the excellence and diversity present in the field.
We invite you to participate in the 2025 ArchDaily Brasil Building of the Year Award. Now in its ninth edition, we charge our readers with the responsibility of recognizing and rewarding the projects that have made the greatest impact on the profession. By voting, you become part of an unbiased network of judges, recognizing the most relevant projects built in Portuguese-speaking countries over the past year. Only a few days remain until the end of the nomination stage, which will select the 15 finalists for the 2025 ArchDaily Brasil Building of the Year Award.
Registered users can vote for their favorite project once per day. The nomination stage closes on April 1 at 11:59 PM (Brasília time, GMT-3).
A week ago, we announced the 15 finalists for the ArchDaily en Español Obra del Año Award, which celebrates the best architecture in Latin America and Spain, inviting our readers to act as a jury and select their favorite projects from those published throughout the year. Today, the time has finally come to reveal the winners of the 2025 Obra del Año Award.
Historically, architecture is a discipline that for many years was a male-dominated territory, until in 1939, María Luisa Dehesa became the first Mexican female architect. Yet, despite the perception that gender parity has been achieved in the education of architects in Mexico, the concept of masculinity (which can be exercised by both men and women) continues to permeate architecture. This is reflected in design processes, in the figure of the "unreachable architect," in a sense of competitiveness, in hierarchical structures, and, in the most unfortunate cases, in the notion that women design interiors while men design *real* architecture.
Croquis CDMX is an initiative led by Héctor López, founded eight years ago to foster and strengthen the connections between the eye, the brain, and the hand. The project seeks to portray life in Mexico City through freehand sketches. While architectural education is geared toward training professionals to design and construct buildings, Héctor—who studied at the Faculty of Architecture of the National Autonomous University of Mexico—views university education as “the axis of all elements: I already knew how to draw, and in school I became interested in construction, history, and theory. That was where drawing became disciplined. I would encourage students to draw, regardless of whether they think they can or not, because you discover things that you don't understand when drawing with software.”
This article is part of our new Opinion section, a format for argument-driven essays on critical questions shaping our field.
Before architecture students become authors of space, they are subjected to one. For years, they work inside a building that teaches without announcing itself as a teacher. It organizes their exhaustion, their ambition, their visibility, their solitude, their friendships, their sense of scale, and their relationship to judgment. Long before a student can articulate a position on architecture, the school has already offered one in its implicit built environment.
This is not to suggest that buildings determine architects. The influence is slower and less complete than that. A school building operates more like a hidden curriculum: a spatial discipline that works alongside faculty, syllabi, institutional culture, and student life. It teaches through access and obstruction, program adjacencies, daylight exposures, and scale. It produces habits of attention before it produces explicit beliefs.
This week on the TERRAZA podcast, Nicolás Valencia speaks with Chilean sociologist and Universidad San Sebastián academic Ricardo Greene, editor of the landmark book "Ciudad Fritanga," published by Editorial Bifurcaciones in 2014.
"Ciudad Fritanga" compiles 34 chronicles of non-metropolitan Chilean cities like Arica, Talca, and Punta Arenas through the lens of poets, artists, and writers such as Lina Meruane, Jorge Baradit, Marcelo Mellado, and María José Navia.
"When people write about cities, they write about London, Berlin, and New York. That is the urban chronicle. However, non-metropolitan cities are also cities," Greene comments in this interview.
This week on the TERRAZA podcast, Nicolás Valencia speaks with Argentine-Spanish architect Zaida Muxí, author of the book “Mujeres, casas y ciudades” (Women, Houses, and Cities), published by dpr-Barcelona in 2018.
In “Mujeres, casas y ciudades”, Muxí proposes rewriting the history of architecture and urbanism by incorporating the contributions of the many women who have been silenced in mainstream historical accounts.
“If we want to play by market rules, housing will never be a right,” Muxí posits in this interview.
The rise of sustainability and the circular economy is transforming the construction industry, driving a growing demand for new specialized roles. Positions such as sustainability managers or circular economy consultants are becoming increasingly common in contemporary projects.
In 2024, the evolution of porcelain tiles has elevated the tactile experience to a new level, transforming them into true works of art. Produced with mineral texture printing technology, the collections feature striking reliefs in dimensions of 120 x 120 cm, 100 x 200 cm, 120 x 250 cm, 160 x 160 cm, and 160 x 320 cm, designed to awaken all the senses. Behind this advancement is Roca Brasil Cerámica, part of the Mexican LAMOSA Group, leading the Roca Cerâmica and Incepa brands.
"Drinking Caracu is drinking health." This is what read on the massive blank wall of a building in downtown São Paulo on the morning of May 1, 2018. Hidden for decades, the advertisement for the famous beer brand now loomed before a massive heap of concrete, twisted metal, and shattered glass. This was the rubble to which the iconic Wilton Paes de Almeida Building had been reduced—a modernist landmark designed by architect Roger Zmekhol and the subject of the documentary Skin of Glass, directed by his daughter, Denise Zmekhol.
The film transcends traditional architectural documentation by blending a personal narrative with the political complexities of contemporary Brazil, a country shaped by deep inequalities and erased memories. At the heart of the story is the building itself, considered a landmark of Brazilian modern architecture, which collapsed in 2018 after a tragic fire.
Stone and marble continue to establish themselves as essential materials in architecture and design, for both interiors and exteriors worldwide. CHC offers a curated selection designed to create spaces with a timeless, elegant character. Discover how to incorporate marble and stone into your projects to add a touch of modern style.
On this week's episode of the TERRAZA podcast, Nicolás Valencia speaks with Chilean architect Sandra Iturriaga about the book Mapocho Aguas Abajo (Ediciones ARQ), a publication developed by the Mapocho 42K Lab at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile that proposes revaluing the heritage and landscape of the downstream stretch of the Mapocho River in Santiago, Chile.
This week on the TERRAZA podcast, Nicolás Valencia talks with Venezuelan-American architect Elisa Silva about her book, "Pure Space: Public Space Transformations in Latin American Spontaneous Settlements" (Actar Publishers), an analysis of a series of public space interventions in communities across Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, and Chile.
Nicolás Valencia talks this week on the TERRAZA podcast with Chilean architect Rodrigo Tisi about his book Objetos y espacios performativos (Ediciones ARQ), research that examines key moments to observe, explain, and establish the possibilities of certain performance practices in academia and creative environments.
This week on the TERRAZA podcast, Nicolás Valencia talks with Brazilian architect and critic Guilherme Wisnik about his book En la niebla (Editorial Bifurcaciones), a series of essays where fog serves as a metaphor for the state of uncertainty in today's world, weaving together contemporary debates on space, art, and politics.
Choosing between vinyl and laminate flooring is no longer necessary, as resilient hybrid flooring combines the best features of both materials. Kiwi is a natural flooring made of 80% wood, utilizing a premium impregnation technology that makes it 100% waterproof. This product features 80% wood, while the remaining 20% is composed of plant-based resins. Consequently, it is 100% PVC-free, making it an entirely eco-friendly choice.
