June 16, 202415:25
Hear
Meanwhile in Punta del Este gated communities and towers grow, the traditional buildings of the peninsula remind us of the golden age of the most exclusive resort in South America. Among them stands out the Santos Dumontan extravagant concrete mass made up of two prisms that are observed upward, when one goes out for a walk along the boardwalk. But, also, the history of this architectural icon It has an origin that links it to Argentina and also to Venezuela.
Strategically located, a few meters from the emblematic sculpture called Los Dedos, between Brava and Mansa beaches, the Santos Dumont aparthotel is considered the largest building complex built on the entire peninsula. It extends for half a block and most of its owners, some of them Argentine, occupy it or rent it in high season. Has more than 25,000 square meters and 300 functional units. Designed by the architect and former Minister of Public Works Walter Pintos Risso, it was built between 1959 and 1963 with top quality materials by the Pérez Noble construction company.
But how to interpret a geometric form that rises in a strange and, at the same time, perfect shape? “We can see it as two prisms with a rectangular base joined in the middle, but at a certain angle,” explains Uruguayan architect Andrés Quintans to THE NATION, during a tour of the Gorlero Avenue area. The first two levels were solved as a large glazed sash behind the structural pillars. They make up an extensive commercial and service gallery. Above this rises the forceful prismatic volume, which breaks on its axis forming an obtuse anglefolding the accentuated horizontality of the facades covered by glazed bands, he adds.
According to the architect, the work consists of a tall building about 30th street and a low volume towards the back, with access through Gorlero Avenue and 24th Street. The first is a large linear package: packet, or boat, is a term used by the Modern Movement to designate longitudinal buildings with a central corridor.
As for the history of the building, it is as particular as its style itself. Initially. the investor was Argentine businessman Mauricio Litman, who carried out a series of important real estate ventures in Punta del Este between 1940 and 1960. He was the creator of the Cantegril Country Club and, to publicize the resort, he held a film and music festival that brought together Mirtha Legrand, Alain Delon, Lana Turner, Yul Brynner and Anita Eckberg, among other celebrities. He also attracted major golf and tennis stars through sports tournaments.
But Litman offered to continue with the Santos Dumont operation when Venezuelan group Finursalinked to the dictatorship of General Marcos Pérez Jiménez who governed Venezuela until the end of the 1950s, standing out for the large amount of public works developed during his administration.
“The capital for the construction of Santos Dumont was contributed by General Luis Llovera Páez, Minister of the Interior of Pérez Jiménez,” the newspaper notes. Punta del Este Post Office. In a note from 2015, in which the media reflects a fire without major consequences that occurred inside an apartment of the building, it explains how the Santos Dumont was built thanks to a swap with Venezuela. “Once the dictatorial regime fell, Llovera Páez arrived in Punta del Este with her two children. He not only built the Santos Dumont, but he also founded the Transatlántico bank that later went bankrupt,” he points out, giving way to the testimony of the Uruguayan businessman Ángel Carbonaro.
“We went to El Jagüel airport to receive the furniture from Llovera Páez’s house. They told us that a plane was going to arrive at six in the afternoon with the general’s things. We went in a truck to look for them. When the plane landed, it was carrying a cargo of gold. That gold was deposited in the Republic Bank of Punta del Este as a five-year guarantee for the Santos Dumont work. There was the first swap (contract by which two parties agree to exchange a series of amounts of money at future dates) of Uruguay. The great thing about this is that we sold Santos Dumont in sixty installments. In the end it was sold for cash. A fortune. They made six times the money they asked for. On top of that, they took the gold,” Carbonaro recalled.
The project of the work arose in the 1950swhen the modification of the Gorlero and its building standards for elevated constructions are regulated, highlights the Uruguayan architect Francisco Villegas Berro in the travel guide Nomadic. On the avenue a new easement; In addition to the four-meter setback, a pedestrian promenade had to be created with shade, or without rain, on which the businesses would have their front, forming an open commercial gallery. Another basic concept that was maintained was the requirement that the towers be isolated, free of party walls.
Thanks to these rules, Santos Dumont presents a striking entrance at the top of a ravinewith a large access ramp for cars, entrance stairs on the sides and a lobby that is practically preserved in its original state.
By the 60s and 70s, times when the city began to be called simply Punta, Santos Dumont fulfilled all the characteristics of a luxury building. He possessed the attributes of “modernity”: design, amenities, views, etc. Today it maintains its aparthotel service, which includes maids, covered parking, movie theaters and amenities. The windows, which give it a characteristic appearance, are made of the same aluminum with which it was built, a new material for the time.
This is not the only case in the world of a work that plays with the v shape. In Montevideo, Uruguay, the original project of the Pan American Building would also be a wide open “v”, almost a bent straight line, explains Quintans. However, only one stage was carried out and the next, which completed the form, remained undone. It is assumed that the architect who created the Panamericano, Raúl Ángel Sichero Bouret, assisted Pintos Risso during the Santos Dumont project.
For Nadine Petrone – author of the IG account lascasitasdenadin, in which he posts discoveries of works of art hidden in houses, buildings and galleries in Buenos Aires – the Dumont entrance did not go unnoticed when he was visiting Punta del Este: “Along Gorlero and its adjacent streets, there are several buildings that capture attention, including Santos Dumont,” he says.
In keeping with the construction style of the 1960s and 1970s, “numerous halls and galleries in the area were adorned with works of art. Among the most recognized are those of the Paéz Vilaró brothers and some students from the Torres García Workshop. This is the case of ceramic mural which is located at the entrance of Santos Dumont. The work, together with the floors composed of marble scales, make up a characteristic set of modern architecture,” he points out.
For his part, Quintans adds some of the peculiar characteristics of the entrance hall, manufactured with monolithic washed outside and polished inside. Added to this are the large pillars rendered in black monolithic.
The mural was made by Dumas Oroño in 1959. He is a Uruguayan artist from the school of Montevideo’s Joaquín Torres García. The works of this school include elements of the urban landscape, such as ships, port, trains and pedestrians, always composed in the geometric logic that structures them. In this case, ships with their chimneys predominate, and a locomotive can be distinguished.
But this is not all. The peninsula offers several emblematic buildings to discover; the Torreón, the Punta del Este, the Lafayette, the Peninsula, El Migue/Cine, the Opus Alfa and the Hotel Biarritz, among many other iconic buildings. It is just a matter of leaving the beach for a few hours, putting on slippers, walking along the promenade, the port and around the Gorlero, looking up and letting yourself be surprised by an architecture that was symbol of an entire era.
