Tag: latin-american-architecture | ArchDaily

Teatro Mauri Restoration Preserves a 1951 Modernist Landmark in Valparaíso, Chile

Antonia Piñeiro — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 05:30:00 +0000

In June 2026, the refurbished Teatro Mauri reopened its doors on Cerro Bellavista in Valparaíso, formerly Chile's main port. The building forms part of Latin America's modernist legacy and stands adjacent to La Sebastiana, one of the renowned residences of the poet Pablo Neruda. It was designed by architect Alfredo Vargas Stoller, author of other icons of modern architecture in Valparaíso, such as the Edificio Cooperativa Vitalicia and the Conjunto de Viviendas Vargas in Viña del Mar. Teatro Mauri opened in 1951 as a venue for performances and cinema. Following a fire in the early 1990s, it fell into disrepair, serving only sporadically as a venue for local parties and events. In 2015, it was purchased by the Sociedad Chilena de Autores e Intérpretes (SCD), which commissioned its restoration from architects Laura Garrido and Gregorio Garretón.

Architecture in the Andes: How Altitude Shapes Design Decisions

Daniela Andino — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 07:30:00 +0000

The Andes are often understood as a continuous mountain range, yet they encompass a wide range of climates and ecosystems. In Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, and Chile, páramos, dry highlands, temperate valleys, and snow-covered landscapes can exist within relatively short distances of one another. As elevation changes, so do temperature, solar radiation, humidity, wind, vegetation, and topography, producing environments that require different ways of building.

Building Public Life: How Bogotá and Mexico City Addressed Urban Inequality

Daniela Andino — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 07:30:00 +0000

In many Latin American cities, peripheral neighborhoods have historically had less access to the resources that make urban life more than just livable. Housing, transportation, and public services are the usual markers of that gap. But there is another gap that is harder to quantify: the absence of places where people can gather, learn, rest, and participate in collective life. When those spaces do not exist, the city not only fails to provide a service. It fails to acknowledge a presence.

When Modernism Meets Local Resistance: Housing and Urban Friction in Latin America

Daniela Andino — Sat, 30 May 2026 07:30:00 +0000

Modern housing was one of the places where modernism made its boldest promise: that architecture could reshape not only the city, but the way people lived within it. As Argentine architectural historian Ramón Gutiérrez has argued, popular housing is "the great unresolved subject, one that usually does not appear in histories of architecture." In Latin America, this absence is significant. Across the 20th century, expanding cities turned housing into one of the clearest ways to imagine urban change, and modernism entered not only plans and drawings, but apartments, neighborhoods, streets, and domestic routines.

AD Classics: Palmas 555 / Sordo Madaleno Arquitectos

Natalia Yunis — Fri, 29 May 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Palmas 555 is a building that stands out in the urban landscape of Mexico City due to its special volumetry and innovative design. This corporate office building was designed and constructed by Juan Sordo Madaleno together with José Adolfo Wiechers and José Ignacio de Abiega as Associate Architects in 1975.

MAC Panamá Selects Palma + Taller TO to Design Its New Museum Building

Antonia Piñeiro — Tue, 26 May 2026 05:30:00 +0000

Following an international design competition launched in January 2026, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Panama (MAC Panamá) announced the selection of Mexican architects Palma + Taller TO to design its new building. The museum is described as "a new cultural infrastructure open to the city, conceived from the identity, climate, and landscape of Panama." The future museum headquarters will be located in the corregimiento of San Francisco, to consolidate the area as a hub of cultural activity. The selection criteria involved the relationship between the museum and the city, prioritizing proposals with integrated elements for community engagement and framing the building as a cultural infrastructure, enriching the contemporary urban environment of Panama City.

Building Autonomy: Latin American Communities Bringing Life’s Systems Into Architecture

Daniela Andino — Fri, 22 May 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Before a building can be inhabited, many other things need to happen. Water has to arrive, energy has to be generated, food has to be grown or transported, and waste has to go somewhere. These processes are usually treated as something outside architecture, even though they shape the most basic conditions of everyday life.

Above Water, Slope, and Forest: Elevated Architecture in Latin America

Daniela Andino — Sun, 10 May 2026 07:30:00 +0000

In Latin America, the ground is rarely just a surface to build on. It can be a river edge, a steep slope, a humid forest floor, a floodable landscape, or a territory under ecological pressure, and in many cases, it carries a history of communities that already knew how to respond to it, building on stilts, on platforms, over water, long before contemporary architecture asked the same questions.

Beyond the Shell: Félix Candela’s Palacio de los Deportes for the 1968 Mexico Olympics

Moises Carrasco — Fri, 08 May 2026 04:00:00 +0000

When Mexico City hosted the Olympics in 1968, it was the first time the Games had been awarded to a Latin American country as well as the first time for a Spanish-speaking nation to host them. This made the games a good opportunity to project Mexico and its culture internationally, thus prompting the government to constitute an organizing committee with prominent local talent. They appointed Pedro Ramírez Vázquez as its president, a Mexican architect who held significant influence over the state's mid-century building program. His approach was explicit: architecture as a synthesis of international modernist technique with Pre-Columbian references and local material culture. Under his direction, the committee would oversee the construction and adaptation of venues distributed across the southern districts of Mexico City, nearly all designed and built by local architects, engineers, and technicians.

Climate and Collective Use: Architectural Permeability in Latin America

Daniela Andino — Sun, 03 May 2026 07:30:00 +0000

Architecture is often understood as a matter of enclosure. Walls define space, separating interior from exterior and establishing clear limits. Yet across many projects in Latin America, this distinction becomes less precise. Rather than operating as closed objects, buildings often remain open, allowing air, light, and movement to pass through them.

40+ Contemporary Architectural Works Across Ecuador Captured by Francesco Russo and Luca Piffaretti

Antonia Piñeiro — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 05:30:00 +0000

Between 2023 and 2024, photographers Francesco Russo and Luca Piffaretti documented architecture and landscapes across Ecuador's coast, the Andes Mountains, the Amazon rainforest, the Galápagos Islands, and cities such as Quito, Guayaquil, and Cuenca. The photographic documentation explores Ecuador's evolving identity through its contemporary architecture, examining how it engages with natural surroundings, urban conditions, and social contexts. The resulting archive includes more than 40 projects by renowned local practices such as Al Borde, Durán & Hermida, Emilio López, José María Sáez, La Cabina de la Curiosidad, MCM+A, Natura Futura, and RAMA Estudio, among many others. The selection demonstrates how architecture can create high-quality spaces that respond to contemporary demands for sustainability and environmental responsibility by combining creativity and technology with renewable resources, despite ongoing economic, climatic, and political challenges in Latin America and beyond.

Pop Star Architecture: BIG Designs Multi-Use Stadium for Shakira’s World Tour in Madrid, Spain

Antonia Piñeiro — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 05:30:00 +0000

Kanye West turning a Tadao Ando Malibu beach house into a ruin, Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi purchasing and re-selling the 1955 Richard Neutra-designed Brown-Sidney House, and fashion designer Marc Jacobs renovating a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house near New York City are just a few examples of pop stars' affair with historically significant architecture. Celebrities, like soccer players, form an elite group characterized by a high concentration of wealth and significant social status. They are not only buyers of high-end architecture as authored property and cultural capital, but also agents of its preservation and promotion. This year, we are seeing new examples of this agency at work from a more abstract yet also more popular perspective: from the stage design for Bad Bunny's Super Bowl performance to a newly designed stadium for Shakira by BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group, architecture is used as a vehicle for promoting Latin American identity.

Eduardo Longo’s Futuristic Spherical House in São Paulo to Open for ABERTO5 Exhibition

Antonia Piñeiro — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 06:30:00 +0000

From 7 March to 31 May 2026, Brazilian architect Eduardo Longo's Casa Bola will open to the public for the first time. The futuristic ball-shaped house in São Paulo will host one of the two parts of the ABERTO5 exhibition, alongside a project on Faria Lima, a major avenue at the heart of the city featuring landmarks by architects such as Ruy Ohtake and Isay Weinfeld. Founded in 2022, ABERTO is an exhibition platform that promotes the encounter of architecture, art, and design in Brazil and internationally. After its first international exhibition at Maison La Roche in Paris, ABERTO returns to São Paulo for its fifth edition, presenting over 60 art and design pieces by 50 Brazilian and international artists. According to architect and curator Fernando Serapião, Casa Bola represents one of the most radical works of Brazilian architecture, challenging conventional domestic space and reflecting Eduardo Longo's experimental vision for housing.

When Art Came First: Spatial Experiments That Shaped Architecture in Latin America

Daniela Andino — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 05:00:00 +0000

Many of the spatial ideas we now associate with contemporary architecture, collective use, and bodily experience did not originate in buildings alone. In Latin America, these ideas were often explored first through art, at a moment when artists were actively questioning how space could be occupied, shared, and experienced beyond traditional forms.

From the Courtyard to the Neighborhood: Latin American Lessons on the Collective Construction of Place

Camilla Ghisleni — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 08:30:00 +0000

In Latin America, encounters do not necessarily arise from grand architectural gestures or monumental urban plans. Instead, they emerge from the between, from intermediate spaces: the courtyard, the veranda, the sidewalk, and the shared corridor. These spaces, often considered residual or informal by traditional disciplines, are precisely where daily life builds connections.

Renovation and Everyday Life: How Latin American Architecture Reinvents Existing Spaces

Daniela Andino — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 05:00:00 +0000

Across Latin America, renovation has become less about preservation alone and more about responding to changing ways of living. Rather than freezing buildings in time, many contemporary projects work with existing structures to adapt them to new domestic routines, social dynamics, and spatial needs. Through strategic changes in materials, composition, color, and light, these interventions reinterpret everyday spaces while maintaining a strong connection to their original context.

The 100 Best Latin American Houses of 2025

Susanna Moreira & Valentina Díaz — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 08:30:00 +0000

Each year, the ArchDaily Curatorial team reviews the projects that resonated most with our readers, identifying the architectural trends and design approaches that captured the greatest attention throughout the year. Across our local sites – ArchDaily Brasil and ArchDaily en Español – residential architecture remains the most popular category, with projects built in Latin America standing out year after year.

Consciously Driven: In Conversation with VOID, the Costa Rican Studio Shaping Regenerative Architecture

Valentina Díaz — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 08:30:00 +0000

The conversation with VOID emerges within the framework of the 2025 Latin American Architecture Biennial, offering an opportunity to explore a practice that listens, cares, and accompanies. Their work unfolds as an act of mediation: through interdisciplinary research and attention to the plurality of natural and social factors, they seek to understand the many natures of a place. Since its beginning in 2012, this process has evolved, consolidating a stance that seeks to design architecture from and for the place—caring for it, healing it, and regenerating it—opening spaces where territories sustain and unfold their own adaptive processes.