The 2025 update of the Buildner ranking, “The world’s most competitive architecture universities,” ranked the ORT School of Architecture at number 50 out of 60, with 668 participating universities. In this same range, ORT shares its ranking with universities such as the University of Pavia (Italy), the University of Wismar (Germany), Lund University (Sweden), and the University of California (United States), among others.
The only Uruguayan institution in the Buildner 2025 ranking
In addition, the School of Architecture at Universidad ORT Uruguay recognized as the only institution in the country to be included in the 2025 edition of the Buildner university ranking, a leading organization in international architecture and construction competitions.
In the Uruguay-filtered view of the site, the platform ranks Universidad ORT Uruguay first Universidad ORT Uruguay the country and assigns it 22 points.
- You might also be interested in reading: “ORT’s School of Architecture is ranked highest in Uruguay according to Buildner (2024)”
The highest-ranked in Uruguay (and the only private one)
Furthermore, in the overall and historical category (“All-time best”), ORT’s School of Architecture ranks highest internationally among Uruguayan institutions, with a total of 226 points, followed by the School of Architecture, Design, and Urban Planning at the University of the Republic (Uruguay), with 104 points.
In this category, which includes 1,880 universities, schools, and architecture institutes from around the world, ORT’s School of Architecture ranked 90th out of 193.
- You might also be interested in reading: “Smiljan Radić Clarke, 2026 Pritzker Prize”
This result once again places the school in an international ranking linked to the ecosystem of Buildner architecture competitions. The result matters, beyond the ranking achieved within Uruguay, because it confirms an active and visible presence on an international platform dedicated specifically to architectural and design competitions.
In this regard, the voice of Architect Carlos Ott —the architect behind some of the works that have shaped the history of Uruguayan architecture—will resonate, as just a few months ago, during the outreach event “Re-imagining Plaza Canadá,” particularly highlighted the importance of competitions in the field.
- We also recommend reading the article: “Re-imagining Plaza Canadá: Inter-university Collaboration at the MNAV with the Canadian Embassy”
During that extraordinary collaboration between the ORT School of Architecture, FADU (Udelar), Carleton University (Canada), and the Canadian Embassy in Uruguay, which took place last September at the National Museum of Visual Arts (MNAV), Ott noted that:
“The important thing is to enter contests: enter, enter, and enter.”
Proof of this is this ranking, in which Buildner compiles a list based on the performance of academic institutions within its own competency framework.
Learn more about the school's outreach activities
What is Buildner and how is its ranking determined?
Buildner is an organization specifically dedicated to creating, managing, and promoting international architecture competitions. has 15 years of experience, has organized 182 competitions, hosted 574 guest jurors, maintains a network of 300,000 architects and designers, attracts 2 million annual visitors to its website, and has a social media reach of 1 million.
Within that framework, the university ranking serves as a tool to view, by country and by edition, the performance of the institutions participating in the Buildner database. The page allows users to switch between the cumulative view “All-time best” view and the 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, and 2019 editions. Each entry in the list displays the points earned in each edition, along with the projects associated with that result.
- You might also be interested in reading: “The Home of Shadows IV: Buildner International Architecture Competition”
This structure of the ranking also helps to understand its purpose. Rather than providing a general academic assessment of all architecture schools worldwide, the ranking shows which universities have achieved the greatest presence and the best results in competitions organized by Buildner.