Spanish for architects: the vocabulary of a building

CEFR B1 Reviewed by Jhoslyn Updated 2026-09-12

Draft copy. Every claim needs a native-speaker check before publishing — the byline is what makes this citable, so it has to be earned.

Start where your eye starts: the outside

You are standing in front of a building. These are the words for what you can see without going in.

• la fachada — the façade, the face onto the street
• el paramento — the plane of a wall, the surface itself
• el vano — an opening. A door, a window, an arch: before it is any of those, it is a vano
• el umbral — the threshold
• el chaflán — the cut corner where two streets meet. Lima’s older blocks are full of them
• el rosetón — the rose window
• la ornamentación — the decoration, taken as a whole
• el entablamento — the entablature: the horizontal band sitting on the columns, made of el arquitrabe, el friso and la cornisa
• la cornisa — the cornice, the projecting moulding at the top
• la imposta — the impost, the band an arch springs from
• el arbotante — the flying buttress
• el pináculo — the pinnacle

Two nouns do most of the structural work:

• la solidez — soundness, how well it stands up
• la estética — the look of it

Those two, plus la armonía, are the words Jhoslyn’s decks use again and again when they ask a student to judge a building. They are the Spanish equivalents of “does it stand up” and “is it any good”.

Arches, vaults and what holds the roof up

• el arco romano — the round Roman arch
• el arco apuntado / el arco ojival — the pointed Gothic arch
• la bóveda — the vault
• la bóveda de cañón — the barrel vault
• la bóveda de crucería — the ribbed vault
• el techo abovedado — a vaulted ceiling
• la columna — the column. Las columnas de fuste estriado are fluted ones
• el orden dórico / jónico / corintio — the three classical orders
• la argamasa — lime mortar: sand, lime and water
• la mampostería — masonry
• el ladrillo — the brick

Say what something is made of with ser de: la bóveda es de ladrillo, la fachada es de sillar. Never está de.

The periods, and where you will meet them in Peru

Almost all of these are feminine, because they agree with la arquitectura:

• la arquitectura prehistórica — with el dolmen, el menhir, el crómlech, la choza
• la arquitectura griega, la romana, la mesopotámica
• la arquitectura gótica — the pointed arch and the ribbed vault
• la arquitectura barroca — extravagance, and the one that matters most in Peru
• la arquitectura neoclásica, la rococó
• la arquitectura moderna and la posmoderna

In Peru the live ones are colonial baroque and what came after it. The Compañía in Cusco and the Iglesia de San Francisco in Lima are barrocas. Arequipa’s churches are carved out of el sillar, the white volcanic stone that gives the city its nickname. Lima’s balcones cerrados — the enclosed wooden balconies over the street — are the detail every guide points at.

Two building materials you will hear constantly and which no European course teaches: el adobe (mud brick) and la quincha (a cane-and-mud frame that flexes in an earthquake, which is exactly why it survived). The adjective for that is antisísmico.

→ Spanish for colonial architecture in Peru covers el claustro, la portada and the rest of that street in detail, and Spanish for doors and doorways does the door itself.

The project, and the words for drawing it

• el plano — the drawing, the sheet. Not el plan
• la planta — the floor plan, and also the storey. La planta tipo is the typical floor
• el corte longitudinal — the long section. La sección transversal is the cross section
• la vista en planta — the plan view. La vista alámbrica — the wireframe view
• la maqueta — the model. La maqueta arquitectónica is the physical one
• la escala — scale. El escalímetro is the three-sided scale rule that reads it
• acotar — to dimension a drawing
• trazar — to draw a line, to set out
• proyectar — to design, in the sense of projecting a scheme. Not “to project an image”
• el diagrama de burbuja — the bubble diagram
• las curvas de nivel — contour lines
• el levantamiento topográfico — the survey
• el programa de diseño — the design software, CAD or BIM

The false friend that trips everyone. El plano is the drawing. La planta is the floor plan or the storey. El plan is a plan of action — a holiday, a strategy — and almost never the thing on your desk. Ask for el plan of a building and you will get a puzzled look.

And la obra does double duty: the building site (estoy en obra) and a work of art (una obra de Picasso). Context sorts it out every time.

What is actually on the desk

Her tools deck is a shopping list, and every noun is concrete:

• la regla — the ruler · la regla T — the T-square · la regla paralela — the parallel rule
• la escuadra — the set square
• el escalímetro — the scale rule
• el compás — the compass, for circles and arcs
• el transportador — the protractor
• la cinta métrica — the tape measure
• el portaminas — the mechanical pencil · los estilógrafos — technical pens · el borrador — the rubber · el sacapuntas — the sharpener
• la plantilla de círculos / la plantilla de curvas — circle and curve templates
• el papel sketch, el papel vegetal (tracing paper), la cartulina (card)
• el cartón piedra, la espuma rígida, la madera balsa, la plastilina, el metacrilato — model-making materials
• el portaplanos — the drawing tube
• la mesa de dibujo — the drawing board

The grammar this vocabulary forces

Ser for what it is, estar for the state it is in. Describing a building needs both in the same breath, and mixing them up changes the claim:

Location takes estar for a thing, and ser for an event. El edificio está en el centro, but la presentación del proyecto es en el centro.

The past progressive, because that is how you report a working day. Her history and tools decks both drill it: forma oraciones en pasado progresivo. The form is estaba + -ando / -iendo.

• Estaba trazando el corte cuando llegó el cliente.
• Estábamos levantando el muro sur toda la semana.
• El equipo estaba revisando los planos.

Use it for the activity that was already under way when something else happened. For a finished, bounded action you want the preterite instead — the past progressive has the full picture.

The simple future, because a project is a promise. Her final tools deck asks for exactly three verbs in the future: construir, diseñar, trazar.

• Construiremos el pabellón el próximo año.
• Diseñaré la planta baja primero.
• El ingeniero trazará los ejes mañana.

In spoken Peruvian Spanish vamos a construir is at least as common as construiremos — the ir a future does most of the day-to-day work, and the simple future leans slightly formal, which is why it turns up in written proposals.

Try it

Fill each blank with es or está, then say the sentence with a real building you know.

1. La catedral ___ de piedra.
2. El techo ___ dañado por la humedad.
3. La reunión con el cliente ___ a las diez.
4. Mi estudio ___ en Miraflores.
5. Esta bóveda ___ de crucería.

→ 1 es (material) · 2 está (condition) · 3 es (an event) · 4 está (location of a thing) · 5 es (what kind of vault it is).

Topics Buildings and architectureArt and craft