The work of engineer Eladio Dieste: Church of Atlántida

Brick ripples like fabric at the Church of Atlántida, where engineer Eladio Dieste made humble reinforced masonry perform structural miracles: undulating walls rise into an equally wavelike roof of his signature Gaussian vaults. Opened in 1960 outside Montevideo, with an openwork cylindrical belfry and a sunken baptistery lit through an oculus, the church pairs frugal means with soaring effect — modern Latin American architecture at its most inventive. UNESCO inscribed it in 2021.