"The city is conflict, just as society is conflict, but the types of conflict that take shape and express themselves in each city reveal what each is like," says urban anthropology specialist María Cristina Cravino regarding the right to the city in Latin America. In a growing context of cities undergoing gentrification, where high land and housing prices displace working-class residents, the new Barrio Maestranza Ukamau offers a compelling example that has much to say about potential pathways to public-interest housing in Santiago, Chile.

Located on the grounds of the former San Eugenio railway workshops in central Santiago, between Santiago Watt and Exposición streets in the Estación Central district, the project was not only designed by architect Fernando Castillo Velasco in his final years and continued by his son Cristián Castillo alongside Elías Becerra and Pamela González, but also by the community of families organized through the assemblies of the Ukamau Social and Popular Movement, where they deliberated and discussed their future homes step by step. The project spans nearly 3 hectares and comprises 424 apartments.

Earlier this year, the Ministry of Cultures, Arts, and Heritage, through the National Cultural Heritage Service (SNPC), launched the bidding process for the design of the Valparaíso Regional Archive. The future building not only aims to preserve historical documents and collections and promote research and access to information, but also represents a major opportunity to value and reactivate the ruins of the historic Palacio Subercaseaux in Valparaíso's Barrio Puerto, Chile. 

Following an evaluation of the 13 accepted bids, the winning proposal was submitted by architects Cecilia Puga, Paula Velasco, and their team. Their design defends and protects the urban profile, showing us how to connect the new with the old. Below, discover the winning project in detail, along with the other awarded entries.

Videos

Desde la periferia is an audiovisual project directed by José Luis Uribe, PhD in architecture and professor at the School of Architecture of the University of Talca, Chile. The project consists of three documentaries to be released progressively over the next two years, exploring various aspects associated with contemporary Latin American architecture. The first installment, Volume I: Ugly, Dirty & Bad: A Contemporary Architecture in Latin America, is an audiovisual essay that gathers some of the initial thoughts on its current state through the oral accounts of a group of architects in a hotel room in Asunción, Paraguay.

Between March 25 and April 3, one of Bolivia's most important architectural events, the Santa Cruz International Architecture Biennial 2022 (VIII BASC), took place. Convened and organized by the Colegio de Arquitectos de Santa Cruz (CASCZ), this year's edition was held in a hybrid format under the theme *Reconectar* (Reconnect), referencing the global post-pandemic reconnection.

The event featured two main award categories for built works and projects—national and international—with a selection jury composed of Ivo Renato Giroto (Brazil), Martin Padrón (Venezuela), Fabián Dejtiar (Argentina/Chile), Roberto Ameneiro (Spain), and Carlos Álvarez (Costa Rica). On the final day of the event, the winners were announced; you can view them below.

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.

At ArchDaily en Español, we recognize the need to stay in constant contact with architecture students, who will be responsible for designing and building the cities of the future. For this reason, we periodically open a call for applications to join our editorial team through our internship program.

If you currently reside in Latin America, this could be your opportunity to contribute local content to the most-visited architecture platform in the world, which inspires and informs hundreds of thousands of architects globally. If you are interested, read on.

To promote the key, transformative role of architecture in improving quality of life and contributing to a better world, the Higher Council of Colleges of Architects of Spain (CSCAE) is revamping the awards it has presented since 1981 with the launch of the first edition of the ARQUITECTURA Awards.

To showcase the valuable work emerging from Latin American and Spanish universities, this year we launched an open call inviting architecture students to submit their graduation projects completed in 2021.

After thoroughly evaluating 137 proposals, our editorial team has selected and highlighted 10 projects that demonstrate rigorous critical thinking in response to their self-defined challenges. The selection valued not only those projects that delivered the best possible architecture through efficient design tailored to their context, program, and users, but also those that paid significant attention to human scale, the environment, experimentation, and new ways of addressing architecture in cities.

Today is the day to discover the finalists of ODA2022: the award for the best Spanish-language architecture. Our expert jury—meaning you, our readers—has selected 15 of your favorite projects from nearly 1,000 architectural works built across Latin America and Spain.

This award has become a true tradition, now in its 14th edition. It is an invitation extended to all our readers to recognize the works published during 2021 that inspired them and represent the identity of their local contexts in a globalized planet, shaping the way architecture is made in Latin America and Spain within an increasingly heterogeneous and multicultural world.

Starting today, and until next Wednesday, March 30, at 11:59 PM (GMT -3), you can explore each of the finalists in detail and vote for the work that best represents the Spanish-language architecture that inspires us, defines us, and leaves a mark on us. Discover all the finalist projects below.

The 2022 Obra del Año Award is brought to you by Dornbracht, renowned for its leading architectural designs, which can be found internationally in bathrooms and kitchens.

Manuel Bouzas and Santiago del Águila, the authors of La catenaria y el arco in the courtyard of Can Balaguer (by architects Flores & Prats) in Palma de Mallorca, present their urban installation ‘Lucerna,’ created for the A Cel Obert ephemeral architecture festival in Tortosa in October 2021.

This monumental lamp, standing over 6 meters tall and covering an area of 55 square meters, hangs from the main courtyard of the Purissima Concepció monastery, radically transforming this 17th-century building through light and color.

Martin Benavidez founded Ben-Avid in 2018, an architectural practice he runs from Córdoba, Argentina, where he develops national and international architectural projects of various scales and complexities.

His projects are commercial spaces, galleries and exhibition pavilions, urban and metropolitan transport infrastructure, among others. They are collaborative and tell stories. It is architecture that has a narrative. His Pavilion for Expo 2020 Dubai together with MMBB Arquitetos and JPG.ARQ is one of his most recent projects. Its protagonists are the waters of Brazil: its rivers and mangroves, a natural heritage that underlies the whole discourse on the sustainability of the planet.

Selected by ArchDaily as one of the Best New Practices of 2021, we conducted the following interview with Martin to tell us more in detail about all his inspirations, motivations, work processes and upcoming projects.

Ensayos Urbanos en el Campo Expandido is a course within the Gropius Chair that brings together students from various disciplines at the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Urbanism of the University of Buenos Aires to collectively build 1:1 scale interventions.

For this edition, the group held a summer workshop in the city of San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina, where they explored landscape intervention using local materials—stones, willow branches, and water. The project is located at Playa Centenario on Lake Nahuel Huapi, at the mouth of the Ñireco—one of the area's most polluted urban streams—to create a gathering space and highlight the sector's urban conflicts.

This year we celebrate the fourteenth edition of the Obra del Año 2022 award—the highest recognition in the Spanish-speaking architectural world, where the winners are chosen by popular vote. Starting today, Tuesday, March 8, our readers will be responsible for determining which projects inspired us during 2021, faithfully representing the identity of our local contexts while shaping the way architecture is practiced around the world.

Over the next three weeks, the entire ArchDaily en Español network (Plataforma Arquitectura, ArchDaily México, ArchDaily Colombia and ArchDaily Perú) will serve as the platform to celebrate the best built architecture in Spanish-speaking America and Spain.

With nearly a thousand projects published in 2021, you can easily find your favorites by browsing through each category and using the search engine to filter projects by country and architecture firm. 

The 2022 Obra del Año Award is brought to you by Dornbracht, renowned for its design leadership in architecture, which can be found internationally in bathrooms and kitchens.

"I'm an architect... now what?" must be one of the most common questions for any recent graduate with an architecture degree in hand. Over the years, many will find jobs in different industries that do not necessarily involve working in an office designing and constructing buildings.

The Alejandro de la Sota Foundation has created a portal to showcase the leading figures and works of the pioneers of Spanish modern architecture. The reason? When discussing the Modern Movement, it often seems that only architects like Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, or Walter Gropius are mentioned. But what was happening in Spain during those years? Which figures stood out, and what were their intentions when designing?

The IPCC has published its latest report on the environmental crisis, "Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability." The latest findings warn that urgent priority must be given to action on the adaptability of the built environment, noting that, globally, the most rapid growth in urban vulnerability has occurred in informal and unplanned settlements, as well as in small to medium-sized urban centers in low-income countries with limited adaptive capacity. This is a recurring reality across Latin America.

Academic architectural production in Ibero-America is vast and valuable; therefore, we believe it is necessary to launch an open call to showcase the best final degree projects resulting from this work.

Fernando Abellanas had already shown us how to take refuge from the city within the city itself, with an installation that invited shelter in the interstitial spaces of an existing bridge. This time, he presents Urban Macroparasite: a habitable and connective structure created during the UIT Urban Festival in Tartu, Estonia.

This mobile installation adapts to achieve structural parasitism, prompting us to rethink how we occupy the inert and hidden spaces that make up our cities.