The Oscar Niemeyer Prize for Latin American Architecture, ON Prize, is an initiative of the Network of Latin American Architecture Biennials -REDBAAL-, founded in Quito, through the Constitutive Act signed on November 23, 2012 within the framework of the XVIII Pan American Architecture Biennial of Quito, BAQ 2012.

Today architecture is a cultural fact, and as such, it participates more and more in the activities of a globalized world, which is why our radius of action, as architecture professionals, expands and spreads with the media and allows us a regional, continental and global integration. To consolidate this integration, we must open our borders and unite with our neighbors, with a broad criterion, based on respect for our cultural traditions, which condition a way of thinking, seeing and doing architecture. We must recognize the value of the local and enrich it with the global, appropriating everything that enriches us as peoples and societies. Architecture protects and communicates, it is a public fact, from which we cannot abstract ourselves, the city is also composed of architectural facts, so architecture must be thought from and towards the city. It is in this context that the Oscar Niemeyer Award for Latin American Architecture arises as one of the fundamental initiatives of the Network of Latin American Architecture Biennials -REDBAAL-, to recognize the best of its architectural production, at a time of an unquestionable strengthening and presence of Latin American architecture in the international context.