A Shared Language: Latin American Identity as a Way of Designing

Our architectural identity does not come from repeating an image, but from combining roots, experiences, and knowledge to transform each place without erasing its essence.

An Identity Built Over Time

A studio’s identity does not emerge in its first project, nor can it be found in a single form that can be repeated. It is built over time: through the decisions that endure, the mistakes that teach, and the people who introduce new ways of understanding space.

Projects may change in scale, materiality, and expression without losing coherence. Identity is not about making every project look the same. It lies in the way we respond to context, integrate architecture and engineering, and design for the people who will truly inhabit the spaces.

Latin American Identity Is Not a Façade

There is no single Latin American architecture. The region is made up of multiple geographies, cultures, and traditions. Precisely for that reason, its identity cannot be reduced to colors, arches, textures, or specific materials. Institutions such as UNESCO and MoMA describe Latin American architecture as the result of many historical layers, cultural exchanges, and creative responses to processes of social and territorial transformation.

Perhaps that is where its true value lies:

Latin American identity has never been about preserving pure forms, but about learning to create something of our own through cultural blending.

Its architecture has absorbed external influences, reinterpreted them, and adapted them to local realities. In Quito, for example, historic architecture emerged from the synthesis of European models, local techniques, and Indigenous knowledge. Cultural blending was not a loss of identity; it was the origin of a new one.

Latin American identity therefore appears as an attitude toward design:

• Adapt before imposing.

• Transform without erasing.

• Turn constraints into opportunities.

• Recognize that climate, landscape, and everyday life also shape design.

• Understand that inhabiting a place is not simply occupying space, but relating to others.

  
  

Spaces for Living Together

Across much of our culture, the home has never been only an individual refuge. It has also been a place for gathering, conversation, celebration, and family life.

That is why courtyards, corridors, terraces, balconies, covered entrances, and shaded spaces hold such importance. They are not decorative elements. They are thresholds that connect the intimate with the collective, and the interior with the landscape.

Latin American vernacular architecture shows that spaces, materials, and construction systems emerge from a deep understanding of the environment and reflect different ways of living. In the work of Rogelio Salmona, this identity is expressed through collective spaces and an architecture that seeks to transform a place, not merely alter it.

This may be one of the most relevant lessons of our architecture today: a building does not belong to a place simply because it uses local materials, but because it understands how its inhabitants live.

Translating Our Roots in Florida

Designing in Florida does not mean literally transferring forms from Latin America. It means translating their underlying principles.

Shade can become façade depth. A courtyard can evolve into a protected terrace. The relationship with vegetation can be incorporated through balconies, circulation paths, and transitional spaces. Shared life can organize a home even within more compact or vertical programs.

At the same time, everything must respond to the subtropical climate, hurricanes, flooding, building codes, and the urban particularities of each city. Our roots bring sensitivity; the new context demands precision.

The Evolution of Coronel Associates

The projects of Coronel Associates reveal an evolution, but not a rupture.

The earliest explorations present more direct gestures: expressive roofs, horizontal compositions, clearly defined entrances, and an immediate connection with the tropical landscape. Over time, that language gains greater depth and complexity.

The roof becomes shade.The courtyard becomes a terrace.The horizontality of the home begins to develop vertically.Materiality is no longer merely a finish; it begins to organize the volumes.The façade is no longer a surface, but a sequence of layers balancing transparency, privacy, light, and vegetation.

Projects change because the team, experiences, clients, and challenges also change. Yet certain principles remain: compositional clarity, technical integration, responsiveness to context, and the pursuit of human-centered spaces.

An Identity Built Together

Architecture does not emerge from a single voice. Each architect, engineer, designer, collaborator, and client contributes a different perspective. The studio’s identity appears when those differences are not eliminated, but guided toward a common direction.

Being Latin American does not mean designing while constantly looking toward the past. It means recognizing what our cultures have taught us about community, adaptation, climate, and territory, and using that knowledge to respond to contemporary challenges.

Our identity is not a finished formula. It is a language that continues to evolve with every project.

Because, in the end, architectural identity is not only what we repeat. It is what we choose not to lose, even as everything else changes.