Club Hotel Casapueblo / Museo-Taller Casapueblo was the highlight of our cruise ship stop in Punta del Este.
This fascinating structure today is part hotel (73 "apartments" spread over 13 floors) and part museum (with a video about and artwork by Uruguayan artist Carlos Paez Vilaro.) Vilaro started what became Casapueblo on desolate Punta Ballena in 1958 with a summer house and workshop in mind, then kept expanding -- without architectural plans! (He sometimes added a room with a particular houseguest in mind.) He viewed his project as a 36-year work of art ("livable sculpture"), not home construction! Reminiscent of houses in Mykonos or Santorini, Greece, the structure of whitewashed cement and stucco resembles nests of the hornero, an Uruguayan bird.
Vilaro died in 2014.
TIPS:
* This place is massive, and it's impossible to get a true sense of it when you're inside. If you stay here, though, you can get down to the beach and look back at the towering building, which covers a hillside.
* If you can arrange to be here shortly before sunset, you can enjoy the daily "Ceremony of the Sun." As the sun sets, the artist's recorded voice recites a poem to bid it farewell.Â
 * Some of Vilaro's descendants still live here. A guide, waitress or bartender would probably point the private section out if you ask; in this labyrinthine building, it's difficult to describe the location.