Latin American Houses

Latin American houses are the homes designed and built across Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and South America, from colonial courtyard houses to modernist concrete villas and today's compact urban apartments. What ties them together is less a single style than a shared set of conditions: warm or highly varied climates, strong craft traditions in brick, timber, earth and concrete, and cities where formal and self-built housing grow side by side.

What are Latin American houses?

The term covers residential architecture of every scale in the region: single-family houses, row houses, apartment blocks, social housing and the many informal homes that residents build themselves over years. It includes landmark works by celebrated architects and the everyday building types that define whole neighbourhoods, such as the Buenos Aires PH or the Brazilian casa de vila.

It is broader than any one national tradition. Tropical modernism describes a specific mid-century approach to building in hot, humid climates, and it overlaps strongly with Brazilian and Caribbean houses, but it says little about a stone farmhouse in the Andes or a brick PH in Buenos Aires. Vernacular architecture, meanwhile, focuses on traditional building without architects. Latin American houses spans both, and it is often most interesting where the two meet: where an architect borrows a clay-tile roof, a thatched palapa or a planted patio and rebuilds it with contemporary structure.

A few spatial ideas recur across the region. The courtyard house, inherited from Iberian and earlier Mediterranean models, organises rooms around an open-air centre that brings light, air and privacy into deep urban plots. The deep porch, terrace or gallery makes outdoor living the daily default in warm climates. Exposed structure, especially board-formed concrete and fired brick, is treated as finish rather than hidden. And there is a long habit of houses that grow, built in stages as families and budgets allow.

A short history of Latin American houses

Indigenous and colonial foundations. Long before European contact, builders across the region developed houses suited to their climates, from adobe and stone in the highlands to raised timber and thatch in the tropics. Spanish and Portuguese colonisation brought the patio house, with thick walls, street-facing rooms and an inner courtyard, which shaped the colonial towns of the region.

Barragán and emotional architecture. In Mexico, Luis Barragán turned the walled garden and the coloured plane into a language of calm and enclosure. His house and studio in Mexico City was inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 2004, and the Casa Luis Barragán describes it as a masterpiece of the modern movement that fuses traditional and vernacular elements into a new synthesis. He received the Pritzker Prize in 1980.

"Any work of architecture which does not express serenity is a mistake."

Luis Barragán, as quoted by the Pritzker Architecture Prize (1980)

Brazilian modernism. In the mid twentieth century a generation of Brazilian architects including Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer adapted European modernism to a tropical climate with brise-soleil, pilotis, gardens and free curves. In São Paulo, Lina Bo Bardi completed her own Glass House in 1951, a glass-walled living floor held on slender pilotis so that the landscape flows underneath, as the record of her work describes.

The Paulista school. From the 1950s, São Paulo architects such as João Vilanova Artigas and Paulo Mendes da Rocha made raw concrete the main expressive material of the house, with large spans, open plans and few internal walls. The Pritzker Prize describes Mendes da Rocha as a member of the "Paulist brutalist" avant-garde of the 1950s and awarded him the prize in 2006.

Incremental and social housing. The region has also produced some of the most influential thinking on low-cost housing. Alejandro Aravena's office ELEMENTAL designs what it calls "half of a good house", leaving space for residents to complete their homes themselves. At Quinta Monroy in Iquique, Chile, 93 two-storey units were built half finished so families could fill in the rest. Aravena received the Pritzker Prize in 2016, the fourth Latin American laureate after Barragán, Niemeyer (1988) and Mendes da Rocha.

Key principles of Latin American house design

Climate before technology

Many Latin American climates are warm enough that shade, cross-ventilation and rain protection matter more than insulation. Deep eaves, porches, lattices, patios and raised floors do much of the environmental work. In highland and southern climates, thermal mass and sun orientation take over.

Material honesty and craft

Fired brick, board-formed concrete, local stone, timber, bamboo and clay tile are widely available and often left exposed. Skilled masonry and carpentry traditions make it practical to build expressive structure without imported systems, and a regional roof can sit over an entirely modern frame.

The open centre

Patios, courtyards and light wells solve the deep, narrow urban lot, common in colonial grids and later subdivisions. They also shape privacy, moving family life away from the street and toward a shared interior garden.

Privacy and the street

In many Latin American cities the house presents a closed face to the street: a high wall, a screen of timber slats, a grille or a solid door, with the generous rooms behind it. The design task is to filter rather than block, letting air and light pass while keeping views out, and to make the threshold between street and home a place in its own right.

Topography and landscape

Much of the region is steep, from Andean slopes to coastal ravines. Houses either step down a hillside, rise above it on columns, or anchor into it with stone bases, and the choice determines cost, earthworks and how much of the site's ecology survives.

Growth, density and affordability

Housing shortages and self-built neighbourhoods are part of everyday life in many Latin American cities. Designers increasingly work on retrofit, subdivision and incremental extension rather than only the new detached house.

Latin American houses on uni.xyz

The Latin American houses topic on uni.xyz combines member projects, many of them competition entries, with a large body of editorial journals on recently completed homes. Together they move from social housing retrofit to compact urban apartments and hillside houses.

Two entries to the Nano Nest 2020 competition took on Mexico. Bamboo Home by Subhadra auman offers families in crowded concrete buildings in Mexico City ventilation, light, space and greenery as a response to pollution, built, as its name says, around bamboo.

"The bamboo home provides a sustainable solution to the dense concrete jungle that is Mexico City."

Subhadra auman, Bamboo Home project statement

The Mexican Nano Nest by Cezary Loj simplifies the structure to make the house more affordable to build and uses shared rooms to enlarge every private one.

The journals offer the richest reading. Casa Praça by Felipe Hess Arquitetos breaks a house on a 10 by 60 metre São Paulo lot into three blocks separated by patios, so that the house grows more private the deeper you walk into the plot, with dusty pink stucco walls turning side passages into small streets. In the same city, Apê Tamarindo by Estúdio Minke strips a 1940s Higienópolis apartment back to its concrete frame and fills it with reclaimed brick, timber and plants to recreate the feeling of a casa de vila several floors up.

In Buenos Aires, PH Juana by Estudio NU renovates an 80 m² PH in Coghlan, leaving its brick vaults exposed, marking new work in white, and using a sculpted courtyard stair to turn a single-level unit into a house with a roof garden.

Slopes produce some of the most inventive work. House in the Air by Marcela Carranza Arquitectura lifts a 268 m² home for elderly owners on slender steel posts above a steep site in San Mateo de Alajuela, Costa Rica, so the whole programme sits on one accessible floor while the hillside, its water and an old mango tree carry on underneath. R.I. House by Infante Poblete Montt sits on top of El Morro hill in Zapallar, Chile, giving board-formed concrete the job of framing the bay and grey stone the job of holding the hill.

Regional roofs return in new forms. Casa Eva by S-AR stacks three apartments inside an open concrete grid in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, with terraces in place of walls and a thatched palapa on top. Casa Limoneros by Quaterna Arquitectos keeps the pitched clay-tile roofs of Valle de Bravo and puts board-formed concrete, steel and sliding glass beneath them.

Challenges and future directions

The biggest challenge is the gap between the celebrated house and the housing most people actually live in. Many of the region's cities have large self-built districts, and a great deal of formal housing takes the form of repetitive public blocks on the urban edge. Designing for these conditions means retrofit, densification and support for incremental building rather than only the one-off villa.

"Alejandro Aravena has pioneered a collaborative practice that produces powerful works of architecture and also addresses key challenges of the 21st century."

Tom Pritzker, announcing the 2016 Pritzker Architecture Prize

The most direct engagement with that problem on uni.xyz is Urban Retrofit: The Collective and the Individual by jgfrontado, an Editor's Choice entry in the Retro-Fit 2020 competition. Its test case is a large Misión Vivienda public housing development in Caraballeda, Venezuela, where a structural frame bolted to the existing blocks lets each household build outward with balconies, gardens or workspaces, a contemporary echo of the region's incremental tradition.

Climate is a second pressure. Hotter summers, heavier rain and landslides on steep, densely built slopes put the inherited strengths of the region, shade, ventilation and light construction, back at the centre of practice. Concrete remains the default material, and its carbon cost is pushing renewed interest in brick, earth, timber and bamboo.

Heritage is the third. Colonial centres, modernist apartment blocks and early twentieth century row houses are all ageing at once. Several of the journals above show how careful renovation can keep their structure and character while adapting them to smaller households and older owners.

Latin American houses for students and designers

For a thesis, look for a typology with a problem attached: the narrow urban lot, the PH or casa de vila, the hillside house, the public housing block that needs retrofit, or the self-built neighbourhood that needs services. Study Barragán for enclosure and colour, the Paulista school for structure, and incremental housing for how a home can be designed to change. Visit, measure and draw existing houses before inventing new ones.

Competitions on housing, compact living and retrofit are a good way to test these ideas; see open briefs on uni.xyz competitions. For more regional depth, follow Mexican architecture and Brazilian architecture.

Frequently asked questions

What defines a Latin American house?

There is no single style, but common traits include a strong relationship with outdoor space through patios, terraces and porches, climate-driven design focused on shade and ventilation, and exposed materials such as brick, concrete, stone and timber. Many houses are also designed or adapted to grow over time.

Who are the most influential Latin American residential architects?

Frequently cited names include Luis Barragán in Mexico, Oscar Niemeyer, Lina Bo Bardi, João Vilanova Artigas and Paulo Mendes da Rocha in Brazil, and Alejandro Aravena in Chile for his work on incremental social housing. Barragán, Niemeyer, Mendes da Rocha and Aravena have all received the Pritzker Prize.

What is a PH in Buenos Aires?

A PH, short for propiedad horizontal, is a long, narrow dwelling within a subdivided building, usually reached through a shared passage and lit by a patio. Many have been altered over decades, which makes them a popular subject for renovation, as in PH Juana.

Why are courtyards so common in Latin American houses?

Courtyards came with the Iberian patio house during the colonial period and suit both the climate and the deep, narrow lots of many city grids. They bring light and air into the middle of the plan and keep family life private from the street.

What materials are typical in Latin American houses?

Fired brick, reinforced and board-formed concrete, stone, adobe, timber, bamboo and clay roof tiles are all widely used. Contemporary architects often combine a traditional element, such as a tiled or thatched roof, with modern concrete or steel structure.

References and further reading

• Casa Luis Barragán, Fundación de Arquitectura Tapatía Luis Barragán
• Luis Barragán, 1980 Laureate, The Pritzker Architecture Prize
• Paulo Mendes da Rocha, 2006 Laureate, The Pritzker Architecture Prize
• Alejandro Aravena, 2016 Laureate, The Pritzker Architecture Prize
• Lina Bo Bardi, Wikipedia
• Quinta Monroy, Wikipedia