Latin America’s architecture landscape embraces a fascinating and vibrant mix between past, present and future, where native and imported architectural concepts are intermingled with a distinctive idiom of a region with a vast and diverse range of cultures, landscapes, climates, and biodiversity.
The Latin American architecture, historically influenced by Europe, mainly through ideas and solutions adopted from Spain and Portugal, has been able to shape a unique language and style, blending in simple and practical architectural ideas and solutions with local culture and traditions.
Held every two years, The Latin American Architecture Biennial (BAL) showcases this dynamic panorama, promoting innovation, creativity, and collaboration throughout Latin America’s architectural landscape. Over the years, BAL has spectacularly succeeded at transforming the architectural discourse in the region, while always celebrating the value of native and patrimonial architecture but also addressing today’s pressing challenges.
Today, the BAL has strongly contributed to establish the Latin American architecture on the world scene, drawing international attention and providing a key platform to showcase emerging Latin American architectural talent, creativity, and innovation.
A careful and rigorous selection process to be part of BAL requires applicants to be under 40 years old, have built projects, and be able to demonstrate outstanding architectural quality, in which each project thoughtfully responds to its surroundings. While hundreds of applications are received, an internationally renowned jury assesses each entry’s uniqueness and sensibility, highlighting their ability to offer innovative solutions which integrate local context, sustainability, and social awareness.
Out of the proposals received, approximately 10 to 15 architectural firms are selected, in order that all geographical areas in the Latin region are represented.
In its latest edition, BAL 2021 exhibited a set of valuable works that reflected leading Latin American architectural tendencies. Among these, special importance was given to the merging of artisan and more traditional building techniques that combine with modern materials and solutions that yielded innovative proposals.
One of the selected architectural firms was Estudio Gustavo Utrabo, from Brazil, whose project ‘Children Village in Bodoquena’ was selected to highlight how a refurbishment project, located in the Pantanal biome – the world’s largest floodplain, with a continuous of 250,000 km2 wetland – was able to carefully respond to the site’s specific vegetation, climate, biodiversity, and culture. Designed to increase the children’s sense of belonging, individuality, and environmental responsibility through the exchange of ancestral techniques, mainly natural and locally available building materials, as well as innovative solutions of contemporary architecture
Other architectural firms selected for BAL 2021 were Natura Futura, from Ecuador, whose architecture aims to rethink both traditional building practices and flexible architecture towards a more sustainable way of living.
One of their highlighted projects was ‘Casa Zancos’, a home designed to allow people to experience an open, light, and adaptable lifestyle by means of a permeable and multifunctional space. Its envelope is composed of traditional clay bricks as well as wooden lattice screens to avoid the use of glass in windows, allowing for natural ventilation and shading required for the site’s tropical climate. With the goal of developing architecture proper to the tropics, where people experience more closely the traditions and sustainable living, the project manages to capture in a lightweight permeable building, a lifestyle constantly connected to nature.
Reinterpreting vernacular and rural architecture, along with a contemporary yet simple architecture, was one of the other firms selected for this Edition, the Uruguayan firm ‘TATU Arquitectura’, whose work derives inspiration from traditional barn architecture, allows for the creation of simple and intimate refuges, where the interior of the space merges with the wonderful natural landscape that surrounds its projects, thanks to a simplified geometry. One of these is ‘Refugio Villa Serrana’, whose simple materials like eucalyptus, and a lightweight construction, create a unique and comfortable living experience.
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