CARLOS PAÉZ VILARÓ

Carlos Páez Vilaro was born in Montevideo, Uruguay ( November first, 1923). He was a total artist: poet, writer, painter, director, muralist, ceramist and the most interesting but not surprising one, he was, and he is, considered an architect. Why I said it is interesting? Because, like other famous in the field, he never studied or specialised in architecture.  

The most important thing that architects do is design (in addition to many other things that the doing of the architect entails, that is a big complex world) and in fact, he did not design, he just created.

 

I’ll explain you.

In 1958 “Casapueblo” began to build what Carlos called a "habitable sculpture" located in Punta Ballena, 13 km from Punta del Este. Over time, in addition to being his home, the place became a workshop, then like a museum and hotel, being one of the tourist attractions of the department of Maldonado in Uruguay. He expended 36 entire years of his life building by hand (because he also was constructor) each room of the mansion, expanding without previous plan.

Actually, he said "I built it as an habitable sculpture, without plans, especially at the request of my enthusiasm. When the municipality recently asked me for the plans that I did not have, an architect friend had to spend a month studying the way to decipher it

But Carlos Vilaró was an arquitect. And although he never cursed the career, I admire him because he created a place like sculpture that manages to express deep feelings in the inhabitants and visitors, through frames, tours, views, compositions. It is a place where he expresses all his art, for example, he wrote a poem in the sun while watching the sunset, the poem lasts until the sun goes down in the sea, he framed that moment and today the tourists who go there they use to listen it by radio watching the sunset from that same place.

So thats what I admire, he just expended his time in what he loved, the art, no matter what people would sad or the rules imposed.

“pido perdón a la arquitectura por mi Libertad de hornero” Carlos Paez