Montevideo might be small but it knows how to appreciate good architecture
Runners are heading along La Rambla sporting jackets and leggings to keep out the chilly wind sweeping in off the Río de la Plata. On the beach, dog walkers are letting their hounds play fetch on the vast arc of sand. It’s autumn, of course, and the ginkgo trees are covering the pavements in brimstone-yellow leaves while the doormen who attend to the modernist apartment buildings that line the coast road are out chatting with tenants heading to work. It’s a city stretching awake, limbering up for another day.
Air travel still amazes me. Now it did take almost 18 hours and a change of plane in Madrid but – almost – suddenly, you can switch seasons, arrive in a city you have never visited and start assembling a new mental database from scratch. Everyone keeps saying that we need to come back in summer but this autumn-cloaked capital has been a revelation. Welcome to Montevideo.
We landed at Carrasco International Airport on Tuesday night. The terminal is compact – it has just eight gates – but it’s beautiful: a single, sweeping white building, designed by Uruguayan architect Rafael Viñoly. We seemed to be the only flight landing at this hour and by the time we headed out to the taxi stop it was just us standing on the forecourt under the airport’s soaring roof. We were in our hotel 30 minutes later.
Montevideo might be small – some two million people call the metropolitan area home – but it is poised and polished. Between meetings – I am on the road with my London colleague Rebecca and Nicholas, who works for Monocle out of Santiago – I have snuck off to walk the streets of the neighbourhoods near our hotel: Pocitos, Punta Carretas and Parque Rodó.
In these affluent neighbourhoods there is no sign of the edginess that you feel in similar barrios in other Latin American cities. While Masterson Seguridad signs are plentiful, few buildings are barricaded behind the sort of metal fencing you see in, say, Rio. Though a nice café owner did tell me to be wary of pickpockets, so perhaps my risk radar needs some tuning.
And the architecture is knock-out – well, if you are a sucker for gems from the 1950s and 1960s. There are celebrated buildings such as the huge housing block Edificio Panamericano. But what’s most impressive is just the sheer number of impeccably maintained residences. They have names that play on suggestions of European glamour – St Moritz, Saint Laurent, Cap Ferrat – all rendered in gold lettering. I also found an Edificio Andy, which I am sure is the best address in town.
It’s hard to think of another metropolis that has such a legacy of design from this period. And people clearly appreciate the power of good architecture – most buildings proudly display signs revealing who authored them.
On Thursday night we met up with a former Monocle correspondent who lives in Montevideo. She took us to an old-school joint, Bar Paysandú, and told us more about how life unfolds here, about the city’s unwritten codes. She recently bought a house nearby and loves Montevideo as a base for reporting across South America – the fact that she returns to a city where she feels safe and can traverse the streets on a bicycle. In the close embrace of the cosy bar, you could feel its charm, though the vermút in hand might also have had a small influence on the hunkered-down mood.
To read more from Andrew Tuck, click here. Further reading? Is Uruguay South America’s next cinema hotspot? It certainly has reel potential.
