Casapueblo is a building constructed by the Uruguayan artist

Carlos Páez Vilaró Carlos Páez Vilaró (1 November 1923 – 24 February 2014) was a Uruguayan abstract artist, painter, potter, sculptor, muralist, writer, composer and constructor. Life and work Carlos Páez Vilaró was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1923. He to ...

. It is located in

Punta Ballena Punta Ballena is a small peninsula (''punta'') and a resort (''balneario''), as well as an important tourist attraction on the coast of Río de la Plata in the Maldonado Department of southeastern Uruguay. It comprises an approximately long strip ...

, from

Punta del Este Punta del Este () is a seaside city and peninsula on the Atlantic Coast in the Maldonado Department of southeastern Uruguay. Starting as a small town, Punta del Este later became internationally known as a resort for the Latin and North American j ...

Uruguay Uruguay (; ), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay ( es, República Oriental del Uruguay), is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast; while bordering ...

. Initially, it was the artist's summer home and workshop, and includes a

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make th ...

, an

art gallery An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The lon ...

, a cafeteria and a

hotel A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. Facilities provided inside a hotel room may range from a modest-quality mattress in a small room to large suites with bigger, higher-quality beds, a dresser, a re ...

in its facilities. It was the permanent residence of its creator, where he worked and where he spent his last days there.

History

Casapueblo began to be built in

1958 Events January * January 1 – The European Economic Community (EEC) comes into being. * January 3 – The West Indies Federation is formed. * January 4 ** Edmund Hillary's Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition completes the third ...

around a wooden box made with planks found on the coast, called ''La Pionera'' (The Pioneer), by Carlos Páez Vilaró. This box was his first atelier. Casapueblo was designed with a style that can be compared to the houses on the Mediterranean coast of

Santorini Santorini ( el, Σαντορίνη, ), officially Thira ( Greek: Θήρα ) and classical Greek Thera (English pronunciation ), is an island in the southern Aegean Sea, about 200 km (120 mi) southeast from the Greek mainland. It is t ...

, but the artist used to refer to the

hornero The hornero birds are members of the genus ''Furnarius'' in the family Furnariidae, native to South America. Horneros are brown birds with rather short tails and fairly long bills. They are known for building mud nests that resemble old woo ...

's nest, a typical bird of Uruguay, when referring to this type of construction. The building, which took 36 years to complete, has thirteen floors with terraces that allow an optimal views of the

sunset Sunset, also known as sundown, is the daily disappearance of the Sun below the horizon due to Earth's rotation. As viewed from everywhere on Earth (except the North and South poles), the equinox Sun sets due west at the moment of both the spr ...

over the waters of the

Atlantic ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

. It houses a

tribute A tribute (; from Latin ''tributum'', "contribution") is wealth, often in kind, that a party gives to another as a sign of submission, allegiance or respect. Various ancient states exacted tribute from the rulers of land which the state conq ...

to Carlos Miguel, the artist's son and one of the sixteen Uruguayan survivors of the of flight 571 of the Uruguayan Air Force

plane crash An aviation accident is defined by the Convention on International Civil Aviation Annex 13 as an occurrence associated with the operation of an aircraft, which takes place from the time any person boards the aircraft with the ''intention of fl ...

, which crashed in the Andes on October 13, 1972. Carlos Páez Vilaró has received some of the most important personalities from the cultural and political field, such as the writer

Isabel Allende Isabel Angélica Allende Llona (; born in Lima, 2 August 1942) is a Chilean writer. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the genre magical realism, is known for novels such as ''The House of the Spirits'' (''La casa de los espír ...

, the ambassador Mercedes Vicente, the

sexologist Sexology is the scientific study of human sexuality, including human sexual interests, behaviors, and functions. The term ''sexology'' does not generally refer to the non-scientific study of sexuality, such as social criticism. Sexologists a ...

Mariela Castro Mariela Castro Espín (born 27 July 1962) is the director of the Cuban National Center for Sex Education in Havana, as well as the National Commission for Comprehensive Attention to Transsexual People, and an activist for LGBT rights in Cuba. Cas ...

, the artist

Vinícius de Moraes Marcus Vinícius da Cruz e Mello Moraes (19 October 1913 – 9 July 1980), better known as Vinícius de Moraes () and nicknamed O Poetinha ("The little poet"), was a Brazilian poet, diplomat, lyricist, essayist, musician, singer, and playwrigh ...

, among others.

Construction

The building was built of whitewashed

cement A cement is a binder, a chemical substance used for construction that sets, hardens, and adheres to other materials to bind them together. Cement is seldom used on its own, but rather to bind sand and gravel (aggregate) together. Cement mixe ...

and

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and a ...

. It was built in an

artisanal An artisan (from french: artisan, it, artigiano) is a skilled craft worker who makes or creates material objects partly or entirely by hand. These objects may be functional or strictly decorative, for example furniture, decorative art, ...

way and without previous plans, in the form of a maze, do not have straight lines inside and the color white predominates. It was expanded and modified from year to year as a residence in "unpredictable ways".

Accommodation

To 2020 the Casapueblo Hotel has 20 rooms and suites and 50 apartments, hot pool, sauna, bar, and restaurant. The high season is from December to February. The

apartment hotel An apartment hotel or aparthotel (also residential hotel, or extended-stay hotel) is a serviced apartment complex that uses a hotel-style booking system. It is similar to renting an apartment, but with no fixed contracts and occupants can "chec ...

called ''Hotel Casapueblo'' or ''Club Hotel Casapueblo'' has a restaurant called ''Las Terrazas'' (The Terraces) that follows the style of the original construction.

Museum

In the main dome of Casapueblo are the museum and workshop, where one can see part of the work of the late painter, potter, sculptor, muralist, writer, composer and builder

. It has four exhibition rooms:

Nicolás Guillén Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista (10 July 1902 – 17 July 1989) was a Cuban poet, journalist, political activist, and writer. He is best remembered as the national poet of Cuba.

Room,

Pablo Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

Room, Rafael Squirru Room, Sala José Gómez-Sicre, projection room, the Terrace of the Mermaid, the ''Mirador del Hipcampo'' (Hippocampus Lookout), the ''Taberna del Rayo Verde'' (Tavern of the Green Ray) cafeteria and a boutique. The museum can be visited every day from 10 am to 6 pm. Every afternoon since 1994 the Sun Ceremony has been held on the museum's terraces. Minutes before sunset, the artist's voice from a recording, dedicates a poem to the sun to bid farewell to it.

References

External links