Organized By

NYLAAT

Curated By:

Oscar M. Caballero

Project Title

EVOLUTION: Architecture and The Space we Share

Start Date

September 6, 2024

End Date

September 29, 2024

Opening Reception Date

September 7, 2024

Opening Reception Time

2:00 PM

Latin American architecture could be perceived as a fascinating amalgamation of a tumultuous history rooted in prescient civilizations, colonial dispossession, migration, geopolitical shifting, and a constant search to define itself. The geographical political borders across Latin America provide a mischievous reading of the territory. In reality, the richness of this landscape is full of soft boundary transitions from one ecosystem to the other in which urban policies, construction methods, cultural heritage, and materiality are fluid travelers influencing each other regardless of these imposed invisible frontiers.

From Mexico to Argentina, spanning across Latin America and the Caribbean, this discipline has evolved over centuries. Understanding the evolution of our territory means understanding the context of the land. The discourse of the global south becomes more prominent as it exposes the importance of natural resources and pre-Columbian knowledge that needs to be preserved and remastered through contemporary technologies to provide a chance for the reparation of our fractured architectural identity.

Some of the pivotal motifs for the Latin American architectural discourse found in forward-thinking artists and architects in recent years seem to gravitate towards a keen interest in mapping urban memory, tracking geopolitical changes, understanding the nuances of building amidst climate change, repairing our appreciation of the vernacular, integration of new technologies of fabrication and digital preservation.

Evolution: Architecture & the Space We Share is bringing together a thought-provoking cohort of artists and architects engaging with the Latin American spatial landscape from the local to the diaspora scale. Removing the canonical and understanding the narratives propelling the next chapters of our territories through materiality, technology, ancestral knowledge, a deep focus on the creation of community, and preservation of a trans-territorial heritage.