National Hispanic Heritage Month, celebrated annually from September 15 to October 15, is an opportunity to explore and honor the rich cultures and significant contributions of individuals of Hispanic and Latinx origin. At SOM, our Hispanic and Latinx employee resource group, Arquitectos, supports our colleagues through career development, mentorship, and community connection, while also serving the profession and our local cities through industry events and charitable work.

For this year’s National Hispanic Heritage Month, Arquitectos chose the Spanish word “Matices” as a guiding theme. Translating to “nuances” or “shades,” the word honors the richness and diversity within the Hispanic and Latinx community—a celebration of not just the commonalities in our identities, but the nuances that make us unique and define who we are.

Our 2025 celebration spanned our studios from London to San Francisco, with a host of events that explored the theme “Matices” and shared awareness of Hispanic and Latinx culture with all our colleagues.

Global events

At the start of the month, we invited Yiselle Santos Rivera, American Institute of Architects (AIA) President-Elect, to our New York studio for a livestreamed presentation and panel co-hosted by the advocacy group Latinos in Design (LiD). Rivera, an architect and educator born and raised in Puerto Rico, is the first Latina and neurodivergent woman elected to lead the AIA. Joined on the panel by Eduardo M. Llinás Messeguer, Founding Member of LiD, and SOM Associate Principal Daniela Serna, Rivera discussed easing the paths to licensure, improving the AIA’s transparency, and making sustainable design tools more accessible to small firms.

Following Rivera’s talk, we hosted our annual Leadership Perspectives panel with Hispanic and Latinx designers in San Francisco, New York, and London. Senior Associate Principal Fernando Herrera, Associate Emil Duval, and Associate Principal Alejandra Royo spoke about the meaning of identity in their work with moderator Eliezer Lee, Associate in our Washington, D.C., studio. “Looking back, you can see how much similarity there actually is among our countries,” Herrera, who grew up in Santiago, Chile, said during the event. “The Latin American region shares so many cultural elements—in the way we interact and in the importance of family and friendship. It’s incredible how much we have in common.”

Charitable work

In light of the current national discourse surrounding immigration and humanitarian relief, Arquitectos rallied our New York and Los Angeles studios to give back to our local communities. We collected donations in New York, and in Los Angeles, we held a fundraiser for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights’ “I Welcome Immigrants” campaign, which seeks to expand its headquarters to offer greater educational, legal, and emergency services.

An art installation in Texas

On November 1, visit the Pan Am Recreation Center in Austin for Las Piñatas, a large-scale, piñata-inspired installation—including work by SOM—that will be featured at the Mexican American Cultural Center’s Día de los Muertos Celebration.

For more than a decade, AIA Austin has invited artists and studios to reinterpret piñatas, this year exploring the theme of “Sustainability.” Our Austin studio’s piece, Message Piñata, transforms the traditional form into a chandelier made from bike wheels and chicken wire, filled with wrapped messages, drawings, and text from donated books.

The piñata will gradually dissolve rather than ending in a landfill, revealing layers of memory and renewal, and echoing the piñata’s essence of anticipation, discovery, and shared celebration.

Studio-wide celebrations

Throughout our studios, we held local celebrations that brought our staff together to honor Hispanic heritage and to spread awareness of the diversity and similarities in Latinx cultures. Late-afternoon fiestas in Chicago and London and a fresh pan dulce and cafecito breakfast in San Francisco kicked off the month. Our Los Angeles colleagues gathered for a tortilla-making workshop, and the assembly of Message Piñata marked our Austin studio’s first National Hispanic Heritage Month celebration. In New York, we capped off the month with a trivia contest and Mambo dance class in our forum space, to the tune of Latinx music and a variety of Hispanic bites and beverages.