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Videos

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In the 1970s, Cuba faced a severe nationwide housing shortage due to population growth, rural-to-urban migration, and the degradation of existing housing stock. The government's answer was a system that pulled ordinary workers off their regular jobs and put them on building sites instead. This program, known as the Microbrigadas (microbrigades), reshaped entire districts of Havana, where they combined collective self-construction and state-backed technical knowledge, which left a mark on the urban grid of its capital city that persists until today.

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In an era where digital fabrication and automation are increasingly present in architectural practice, manual craft is often seen as a luxury item—restricted to high-end projects whose clients can afford extended deadlines and collaborative processes requiring constant dialogue with artisans. This scenario might have sounded contradictory a few decades ago, when Lina Bo Bardi warned that a process of "deculturalization" was underway and that a critical assessment of "popular" Brazilian civilization was urgently needed to confront totalizing universalisms and *folklore*—the latter viewed by her as an instrument of state alienation designed to neutralize the subversive and transformative character of popular culture:

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Architecture across Latin America this month reflects an ongoing negotiation between environmental challenges, cultural heritage, and changing approaches to public and professional life. From Colombia's earthquake and its impact on historic architecture to new cultural projects in Argentina and environmentally responsive design in Ecuador and Medellín, recent developments highlight how architecture continues to respond to both regional conditions and broader global challenges. Questions of heritage and infrastructure also remained prominent, as UNESCO raised concerns over the impacts of the Tren Maya on Mexico's Calakmul World Heritage site, while new initiatives in Chile and Costa Rica explored ecological design and sustainable practice. The month's stories point to a regional architectural landscape shaped by resilience, adaptation, and the relationship between built environments and their wider social and natural contexts.

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