{"id":392528,"date":"2026-01-27T05:15:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T05:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/392528\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T05:15:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T05:15:16","slug":"from-the-courtyard-to-the-neighborhood-latin-american-lessons-on-collective-placemaking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/392528\/","title":{"rendered":"From the Courtyard to the Neighborhood: Latin American Lessons on Collective Placemaking"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"From<\/a>How the “Espacios de Paz” project is transforming community spaces in Venezuela. Pinto Salinas — Oficina L\u00fadica + PKMN. Image Courtesy of PICO Estudio.<\/p>\n

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https:\/\/www.archdaily.com\/1037901\/from-the-courtyard-to-the-neighborhood-latin-american-lessons-on-collective-placemaking<\/p>\n

In Latin America<\/a>, encounters do not necessarily arise from grand architectural gestures or monumental urban plans<\/a>. They emerge from the in-between, from intermediate spaces: the courtyard<\/a>, the veranda<\/a>, the sidewalk<\/a>, the shared corridor. These areas, often considered residual or informal by the traditional architectural discipline, are precisely where everyday life builds bonds.<\/p>\n

From this Latin American culture<\/a> comes a spatial logic in which daily life is organized in a relational and expansive way. Practices such as sitting at the front door, occupying the sidewalk, and playing in the street produce a lived city that extends beyond the formal limits of design.<\/p>\n

\"From<\/a>\"From<\/a>\"From<\/a>\"From<\/a>\"From+ 5<\/a><\/p>\n

More than the result of infrastructural shortcomings, the occupation of these intermediate spaces expresses a culture that values encounter and improvisation. The Latin American city is thus built less as a finished object and more as a cultural process in constant transformation, where everyday use continually redefines the meaning of space.<\/p>\n

Related Article \u201cThe Citizen Urbanism Claims an Alternative Urban Model From Latin America\u201d: Ocupa Tu Calle\u2019s Lucia Nogales<\/a> <\/p>\n

From this perspective, the collective construction of place is not limited to the design of form or the definition of programmed uses, but involves creating conditions for relationships to happen spontaneously. An experience of collectivity that reveals that space only gains meaning when it is appropriated, cared for, and socially negotiated.<\/p>\n

The Courtyard as a Social Device<\/p>\n

Within the architectural repertoire, spaces of encounter take shape in different atmospheres, and one of them is the courtyard. As an opposite to the \u201cfull,\u201d the courtyard\u2019s void represents the freedom of unprogrammed appropriation. In the Latin American climate, which often favors outdoor activity, the courtyard mediates the transition between the intimate and the collective, sheltering throughout the day children at play, adults in conversation, moments of rest, and celebrations.<\/p>\n

\"FromConjunto Habitacional Heli\u00f3polis Gleba G \u2013 Fase 2 \/ Biselli Katchborian Arquitetos Associados \u00a9 Nelson Kon<\/a><\/p>\n

This multiplicity of uses reveals an architecture that is not organized by rigid programs, but one that accepts\u2014and even encourages\u2014the overlap of life. Authors such as Herman Hertzberger<\/a> have long argued that \u201cincomplete\u201d or ambiguous spaces are those that best accommodate everyday appropriation, precisely because they do not determine in absolute terms how they should be used.<\/p>\n

Far from being a contemporary typology, the courtyard has been present in Latin American culture since the earliest Indigenous settlements<\/a>. In many original communities, the organization of the village is structured around a collective central space\u2014a clearing, a yard, or a patio\u2014that articulates dwellings and concentrates rituals, assemblies, and festivities. This space is neither residual nor secondary; it is the heart of the village\u2019s social, political, and symbolic life.<\/p>\n

Present in contemporary architecture as well, the courtyard\u2014as in the Heli\u00f3polis Housing Complex<\/a> by Biselli Katchborian Arquitetos<\/a> in S\u00e3o Paulo\u2014demonstrates its capacity to structure everyday life beyond residential function. Inserted into a dense and consolidated urban fabric, the complex is organized around courtyards and indeterminate voids that expand the possibilities for informal coexistence, strengthening social bonds and the collective recognition of place.<\/p>\n

\"FromConjunto Habitacional Heli\u00f3polis Gleba G \u2013 Fase 2 \/ Biselli Katchborian Arquitetos Associados \u00a9 Nelson Kon<\/a>From the Domestic to the Urban<\/p>\n

Devices of belonging and encounter, however, do not stop at the limits of the building. They expand and transform into shared backyards, common corridors, and improvised squares. The Latin American neighborhood often operates as an extension of architecture itself, dissolving rigid boundaries between private and public.<\/p>\n

In this context, community facilities take on a central role as mediators between institutional space and everyday use. Colombia<\/a>\u2019s library-parks exemplify this condition. Projects such as the Le\u00f3n de Greiff Library Park<\/a> by Giancarlo Mazzanti and the Remedios Educational Park<\/a> by Relieve Arquitectura<\/a> function less as isolated buildings and more as social infrastructures embedded in the logic of the neighborhood.<\/p>\n

\"FromParque Biblioteca Le\u00f3n de Greiff \/ Giancarlo Mazzanti \u00a9 Sergio G\u00f3mez<\/a><\/p>\n

In these projects, architecture does not close in on itself. Courtyards, platforms, plazas, stairways, and voids articulate with the street and extend public space into the building, while returning cultural programs to the daily life of the surroundings. This approach resonates with Raquel Rolnik<\/a>\u2019s critique of the excessive commodification and regulation of urban space and her defense of the right to the city as the right to appropriation, use, and permanence. By inserting themselves into popular territories and dialoguing with existing dynamics, these Colombian cultural facilities not only provide access to culture but also reinforce local social networks and expand possibilities for collective life.<\/p>\n

\"FromParque Educativo de Remedios \/ Relieve Arquitectura \u00a9 Isaac Ram\u00edrez<\/a>The Common as Practice, Not Form<\/p>\n

Beyond architectural examples themselves, the collective construction of space in Latin America<\/a> is deeply anchored in subjective foundations. \u201cBuilding a place\u201d here is an open process. It is not about achieving an ideal configuration, but about sustaining spatial, social, and political conditions so that space can be continually reinterpreted by its users. This openness implies accepting conflict, overlapping uses, and transformation over time as constitutive parts of common space\u2014not as failures, but as its very reason for being.<\/p>\n

In everyday Latin American life, this logic appears in initiatives such as Venezuela\u2019s Espacios de Paz<\/a>, where, through community participation, vacant lots and unregulated dumping areas are transformed into places of coexistence, generating new social dynamics. It is a practice that dialogues with collaborative and citizen-led urbanism<\/a>, in which common space is not only designed but also built and maintained collectively.<\/p>\n

\"FromOcupa Tu Barrio – Paseo de la fama Inka. Imagem \u00a9 Arturo Diaz Quiroz<\/a>Informality as Spatial Intelligence<\/p>\n

A large portion of Latin American urban settlements are labeled as \u201cinformal.\u201d Yet what is often described as informality reveals, in practice, a sophisticated spatial intelligence. Far from representing a lack of order, informality expresses negotiation, adaptation, and inclusion, operating through everyday use and shared experience. In Latin America<\/a>, these processes show how urban space is produced collectively, in direct response to the needs of life in common.<\/p>\n

This reading finds a key reference in Paola Berenstein Jacques\u2019s book A Est\u00e9tica da Ginga<\/a>, in which she proposes understanding the informal city through lived urban experience. Ginga is not a style, but an embodied spatial logic: a way of continuously adjusting space, where everyday life becomes an instrument of urban production.<\/p>\n

By shifting the focus from finished form to process, Jacques repositions informality as a field of learning\u2014one capable of continuous adaptation, overlapping uses, and the collective invention of provisional solutions. An example is the Fog Water Collection System<\/a> built collaboratively by a local community and architects in Colombia<\/a>, where a simple infrastructure responds directly to environmental conditions and everyday needs. More than a technical object, the system reveals how collective making and informed improvisation can improve space and quality of life.<\/p>\n

\"FromFog Water Collection System \/ Alsar Atelier + Oscar Zamora + C\u00e9sar Salom\u00f3n + SCA \u00a9 Alejandro Saldarriaga<\/a>Lessons for Global Cities<\/p>\n

Even acknowledging that many of these strategies emerge in contexts marked by structural deficiencies and the absence of the state, the core lesson lies in recognizing the value of openness, incompleteness, and continuous adaptation as spatial qualities. Whether in courtyards that host overlapping uses, architectures that extend into the neighborhood, community practices that build the common, or informal solutions that respond directly to everyday life, a less normative and more relational conception of the city emerges. Here, space does not precede use\u2014it is built with it.<\/p>\n

In this sense, Latin American lessons point toward a way of designing that moves away from formal imposition and toward support. These are architectures and cities that sustain possibilities. From the courtyard to the neighborhood, from the domestic to the urban, an ethical spatial stance is revealed\u2014one in which everyday life is not secondary, but the very foundation of how space is made.<\/p>\n

This article is part of the ArchDaily Topic: Coming Together and the Making of Place<\/a>. Every month we explore a topic in-depth through articles, interviews, news, and architecture projects. We invite you to learn more about our ArchDaily Topics<\/a>. And, as always, at ArchDaily we welcome the contributions of our readers; if you want to submit an article or project, contact us<\/a>.<\/p>\n