On June 24, 2026, a severe seismic event consisting of two major earthquakes with magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5 struck north-central Venezuela just 39 seconds apart. The widespread destruction was concentrated along the country's northern coast, heavily impacting the capital city of Caracas and the neighboring state of La Guaira, where fragile urban infrastructure and vulnerable housing stock led to the collapse or severe damage of thousands of residential structures. This disaster mirrors previous devastating events observed during other major seismic events, including the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake and 2011 landslides in Sichuan, the 2014 Ludian earthquake in Yunnan, and the 2017 earthquake across central Mexico. When high-magnitude natural disasters damage entire communities, architects have the opportunity to help by proposing post-disaster architecture with strategic recovery models. Rather than relying on generic, standardized emergency shelters, conscious architectural design can deliver low-cost, rapidly deployable residential infrastructure that preserves human dignity through culturally contextual and dignified spaces.

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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.

Unlike many mountain regions where cold is the defining environmental condition, high-altitude environments in the Andes combine several climatic conditions at once. As elevation increases, solar radiation becomes more intense. Some regions remain humid throughout the year, while others experience prolonged dry seasons. In many places, steep terrain, snow, and changing weather patterns become additional factors that influence how buildings are designed.

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The architecture of Latin America and Spain is a testament to the rich and diverse cultures, traditions, needs, and solutions that define these territories. With more than 700 completed projects in Spanish-speaking countries published on ArchDaily en Español, the time has come to explore, debate, and choose your favorites for the Obra del Año 2026 award.

Now in its seventeenth edition, Obra del Año reaffirms its position as the premier architecture award in the Spanish-speaking world, decided entirely by its community. Starting today, March 24, our readers will take on the responsibility of choosing the best architectural works of 2025.

Over the next three weeks, the collective intelligence of our community will navigate through hundreds of projects built across Spanish-speaking nations: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Spain, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

During the fourth day of the 18th Buenos Aires International Biennial of Architecture, the Biennial Awards were announced, highlighting architectural projects and works developed over the last four years both nationally and internationally. Awarded by the Biennial's Steering Committee, the categories spanned from single-family housing, multi-family housing, and interior design to landscape, urban space, and public and private facilities.

The Pan-American Architecture Biennial of Quito (BAQ2022) will take place at the Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana until November 18. Organized by the Colegio de Arquitectos del Ecuador, Provincial de Pichincha (CAE-P), the biennial has been held since 1978, aiming to foster dialogue, exchange, and reflection on architecture and the contemporary city. This edition's theme, "Inflexions: Looking Back," aims to provide a space for discussion and debate on architecture surrounding turning points in history.

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As another year comes to a close, the ArchDaily team looks back at the year's architectural highlights, compiling a selection of projects to review the content featured in 2022. As part of this retrospective, our curation team presents one of our readers' favorite categories—residential architecture—bringing together the projects that represent the very best of a vast year of architectural production, as chosen by our audience.

At a time marked by anticipation for the future of architecture, yet also by reflection on what has been accomplished over the past year, we present the 50 most-visited houses on ArchDaily in Spanish in 2022. In doing so, we continue our ongoing mission to provide tools, inspiration, and knowledge to everyone working toward a better built environment.

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Rafael Vélez Calisto, a leading figure in shaping Quito's contemporary image, closed the latest Latin American Architecture Biennial with his lecture "The Trajectory of a Life," while Seville-based architect Manuel Ramos had already opened the event three days prior with his presentation, "The Last Century of Architecture in Ecuador." In the interim, practices ranging from MCM + A Taller de Arquitectura, Surreal estudio, Arquitectura X, Duran & Hermida, Diez & Muller, Espinoza Carvajal, and Arquitectura Sur to the selected young firms Rama Estudio and Emilio López presented a glimpse of both the historic and recent architecture of the country—the guest country of honor for the BAL 2023 edition.

ArchDaily's curatorial team strives every day to present our readers with the most significant, inspiring, and innovative projects, while also ensuring a diverse representation of global architecture.

As part of our 2023 Year in Review retrospective on ArchDaily, we look back and reflect on what was published over the past year. Residential architecture remains one of our most visited categories of built projects, generating immense interest among our users worldwide. With this in mind, we have selected the 50 best houses published this year on ArchDaily en Español, offering a brief showcase of the form and character of residential architecture across the Spanish-speaking world.

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The Fondazione Teatro dell'architettura has announced the architecture firm Al Borde (Ecuador) as the winner of the 2024 BancaStato Swiss Architectural Award. Founded in Quito by Pascual Gangotena, David Barragán, Maríaluisa Borja, and Esteban Benavides, Al Borde conceives a collective approach to design and construction, paying special attention to climate variables, the involvement of local communities, traditional construction techniques, and innovation. As they state, Al Borde “inhabits the territory of questioning, where certainties about what architecture should or should not be are constantly under construction.”

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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.

These projects continue that conversation. They engage with conditions that move, absorb, erode, and grow, rather than treating the ground as something to level or control. Elevation allows architecture to adapt without fully taking over: water can pass below, vegetation can remain, and slopes can keep their original condition. In each case, the decision to rise is tied to something specific: water, humidity, topography, vegetation, or ecological recovery, and the knowledge of how to build within it and not against it.

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